
Class- .__ 

Book '< 4 



HEREDITY 



4 t C* 






a 2 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH PSYCHOLOGY. 
From the French of Professor Th. Ribot. 
Large post 8vo. Price gs. 
An Analysis of the Views and Opinions of the fol- 
lowing Metaphysicians, as expressed in their writings : — 



James Mill 
Alexander Bain 
John Stuart Mill 



George H. Lewes 
Herbert Spencer 
Samuel Bailey 



"The task which M. Ribot set himself he has performed with 
very great success." — Examiner. 

" We can cordially recommend the volume." — Journal of 
Mental Science. 



HENRY S. KING & Co. 



HEREDITY: 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF ITS 

PHENOMENA, LAWS, CAUSES, 

AND CONSEQUENCES. 



FROM THE FRENCH OF 

TH. RIBOT, 



,*= 









Henry S. King & Co., 

65 CORNHILL, AND 12 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 

I8 75 . 



^v* . 



{All rights reserved.) 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION. 

PAGH 

Physiological Heredity ... ... ... ... i 



PART FIRST. 
THE FACTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
Heredity of Instincts. 

I. Heredity of Natural Instincts ... ... ... . : . 13 

II. Heredity of Acquired Instincts ... ... ... ... 16 

III. What is Instinct ? ... ... ... ... ... ... 19 

IV. Origin of Instincts : are they Hereditary Habit ? ... ... 26 

CHAPTER II. 

Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities, 

I. Heredity of Touch ... ... ... ... ... 36 

II. Heredity of Sight .. ... ... ... ... 38 

III. Heredity of Hearing ... ... ... .. ... 41 

IV. Heredity of Smell and Taste ... „ ... ... ... 43 



vi Contents. 



CHAPTER III. 
Heredity of the Memory. 

PAGE 

I. Memory referred to Habit, and to the Law of the Indestructi- 
bility of Force .. . ... ... ... ... ... - 46 

II. Heredity, Specific Memory; Heredity of Memory ... ... 52 

CHAPTER IV, 
Heredity of the Imagination. 

I. The ^Esthetic Imagination ... ... ... ... ... 54 

II. Heredity of Imagination in Poets ... ... ... ... 56 

III. Heredity of Imagination in Painters ... ... ... ... 60 

IV. Heredity of Imagination in Musicians . , . ... ... 63 

CHAPTER V. 

Heredity of the Intellect. 

I. Is Intelligence in its highest form Heritable ? Empiricism and 

Idealism in accord ... ... ... ... ... 65 

II. Heredity in Men of Science, Philosophers, and Economists ... 72 

III. Heredity in Authors and Men of Letters ... ... ... 77 

CHAPTER VI. 

Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 

I. Psychological Study of Sentiment ... ... .. ... 80 

II. Physical Tendencies : Heredity of General Sensibility ; of Anti- 
pathy ; of the Sexual Appetite ; of Dipsomania ... ... 83 

III. Moral Tendencies : their Heredity ; Gaming, Avarice, Theft, 

Homicide. Relations between Passion and Insanity ... ... 90 

CHAPTER VII. 
Heredity of the Will. 

I. Active and Contemplative Minds ... ... ... ... 94 

II. Heredity of Active Faculties in Statesmen ... ... ... 98 

III. Heredity of Active Faculties in Soldiers ... ... ... 105 



Contents. vii 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Heredity and National Character. 

PAGE 

I. Permanence of the Character of Nations ... ... ... 107 

II. Jews, Gypsies, Cagots ... ... ... ... ... 11 1 

CHAPTER IX. 
Morbid Psychological Heredity. 

I. Insanity is always produced by Organic Causes ... ... 119 

II. Heredity of Hallucination, Suicide, Homicidal Monomania, 

Demoniacal Possession, Hypochondria, Presentiments ... 122 

III. Heredity of Mania, Dementia, General Paralysis. Statistics ... 124 



PART SECOND. 
THE LAWS. 



CHAPTER I. 
Are there Laws of Heredity? 

I. Facts and Laws ... ... ... ... ... ... 13c 

II. Objections against Psychological Heredity : Buckle and 

Maupertuis ... ... ... ... ... ... 137 

III. Heredity is the Law, Non-heredity the Exception ... ... 143 

CPIAPTER II. 
The Laws of Heredity. 

I. Four Principal Forms of Heredity ... ... ... ... 145 

Section 1. — Direct Heredity. Influence of Parents : Doctrines 
on this Subject. Hybridism. Instances of Heredity from 
Mother to Son, Father to Daughter, Father to Son, Mother 
to Daughter ... ... ... ... ... ... 148 

Section 2. — Atavism ... ... ... ... ... 166 

Section 3. — Indirect or Collateral Heredity ... ... 170 

Section 4. — Heredity of Influence. Heredity compared with 
Alternate Generation ... ... ... ... ... 174 



viii Contents. 



CHAPTER III. 
Essays in Statistics. 



PAGE 



I. Quantitative and Qualitative Science ... ... ... ... 182 

II. Galton's Statistics ... ... •■• ••• 186 

III. Value of Statistical Documents ... ... ... 190 

CHAPTER IV. 

Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 



I. Facts contrary to Heredity ... 

II. Is there a Law of Spontaneity? 

III. Causes of Anomalies 

IV. Disproportion between Causes and their Effects 
V. The Metamorphoses of Heredity 



194 
198 
202 
205 
209 



PART THIRD. 
THE CAUSES. 



CHAPTER I. 

General Relations between the Physical and the 

Moral. 

I. Heredity one Aspect, of these. The Present State of the Question. 

The Opposition between Physics and Morals ... ... 217 

II. Phenomena of Unconsciousness ; the Spinal Cord and Reflex 
Actions ; Automatism of the various Nerve- Centres ; Auto- 
matism of the Brain ; Unconscious Cerebration. The Uncon- 
scious in Psychological Phenomena : Instinct, Habit, Perception, 
Imagination, Reasoning, Character, Language ... ... 220 

III. Phenomena of Consciousness. The Fact of Consciousness referred 
to Nerve Shock. Velocity of Thought : how Measured. Is 
Consciousness Simple or Complex, Cause or Effect ? Impossi- 
bility of conceiving of the Ego without Phenomena, or Pheno- 
mena without the Ego ... ... ... ... ... 232 



Contents. ix 



PAGE 

IV. Two Contemporaneous Doctrines: Mechanism, which reduces 
Thought to Movement ; and Idealism, which refers Movement 
to Thought ... ... ... ••• ••• ••• 2 42 

V. Is the Problem of the Relations between Physics and Morals a 

Case of the Law of Correlation of Forces ? . . . ... ... 252 

CHAPTER II. 

The Relations between the Physical and the Moral : 
A Particular Case. 

I. Has every Psychological State its Antecedent in a Physiological 

State? ... ... ... ... ... ... 259 

II. Examples drawn from the so-called Ideal Passions ... ... 261 

III. Examples drawn from the Intellectual States ... ... 264 

CHAPTER III. 
Psychological and Physiological Heredity. 

I. Possible Hypotheses as to the Relations between these two 
Heredities. Is Psychological Heredity the Cause of Phy- 
siological Heredity? Is Physiological Heredity the Cause of 
Psychological Heredity ? Agreement of the Empirical and 
Idealistic Solutions ... ... ... ... ... 267 

II. Can Heredity be explained ? Darwin and Pangenesis. Heredity is. 

Identity ... ... ... ... ... ... 276 



PART FOURTH. 
THE CONSEQUENCES, 



CHAPTER I. 
Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 

I. The Hypothesis of Evolution ... ... ... ... 283 

II. Can Heredity become a Means of Selection, by Accumulating 
Slight Differences ? Consanguineous Marriages. Half-breeds : 
Predominance of the Superior Race ... ... ... 289 

III. Heredity as a Cause of Decadence ... ... ... ... 301 



x Contents. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 

PAGE 

I. Part played by Heredity in the Genesis of Instincts ... ... 306 

II. Part played by Heredity in the Genesis of Intelligence. Are the 
Forms of Thought the Result of Hereditary Accumulation? 

New Form of the Problem of the Origin of Ideas ... ... 307 

III. Heredity Perfects Intelligence : Facts in Support of this ... 319 

IV. Part played by Heredity in the Genesis of Sentiments ... ... 328 

CHAPTER III. 
Moral Consequences of Heredity. 

I. Heredity and Liberty. The Personal Factor. Wundt and Bain. 

Character and Heredity ... ... ... ... ... 335 

II. Heredity and Education ... ... ... ... ... 34^ 

III. Part played by Heredity in the Genesis of Moral Ideas. Morals 
and the Law of Evolution. Heredity and the Problem of the 
Origin of Evil ... .... ... ... ... 351 

CPIAPTER IV. 

Social Consequences of Heredity. 

I. Part played by Heredity in Education and the vFamily ... ... 361 

II. Caste ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 364. 

III. Nobility ... ... ... ... ... ... 369 

IV. Sovereignty. Constant Opposition in the Social Order between 

Liberty and Heredity. The Future of Humanity according to 
Spencer ... ... ... ... ... ... 377 



Conclusion ... ... ... ... .. ... 385 



HEREDITY 



INTRODUCTION. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL HEREDITY. 

Heredity is that biological law by which all beings endowed 
with life tend to repeat themselves in their descendants : it 
is for the species what personal identity is for the individual. 
By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid incessant variation ; 
by it Nature ever copies and imitates herself. Ideally con- 
sidered, heredity would simply be the reproduction of like by like. 
But this conception is purely theoretical, for the phenomena of 
life do not lend themselves to such mathematical precision : 
the conditions of their occurrence grow more and more complex in 
proportion as we ascend from the vegetable world to the higher 
animals, and thence to man. 

Man may be regarded either in his organism or in his 
dynamism : in the functions which constitute his physical life, or 
in the operations which constitute his mental life. Are both of 
these forms of life subject to the law of heredity? are they subject 
to it wholly, or only in part ? and, in the latter case, to what extent 
are they so subject? 

The physiological side of this question has been diligently 
studied, but not so its psychological side. We propose to supply 
this deficiency in the present work. But the hereditary trans- 
mission of mental faculties — considered in its phenomena, its laws? 
its consequences, and especially in its causes — is so closely con- 
nected with physiological heredity, that we are compelled to 

B 



Heredity. 



consider this latter subject at the outset. This we will do very 
briefly, referring the reader for fuller details to special treatises. 
It will suffice to show, by means of a few definite and well-ascer- 
tained facts, that heredity extends over all the elements and 
functions of the organism; to its external and internal structure, 
its maladies, its special characteristics, and its acquired modifi- 
cations. 

The first thing that attracts the attention, even of the un- 
observant, is the heredity of the external structure. This is a fact 
of everyday experience, and nothing is more common than to 
hear that such and such a child is the image of its father, mother, 
or grandparents. Hereditary influence may manifest itself in the 
limbs, the trunk, the head, even in the nails and the hair, but 
especially in the countenance, expression, or characteristic features. 
This is an observation made by the ancients ; hence the Romans 
had their JVasones, Labeones, Buccones, Capzto7tes, and other names, 
derived from hereditary peculiarities. According to Halleiythe 
Bentivoglios had on their bodies a slightly prominent tumour, 
transmitted from father to son, which warned them of changes 
in the weather, and which grew larger whenever a moist wind 
was coming. The resemblance may be so close as to give 
rise to doubts concerning personal identity, or at once to betray 
parentage. Ten years before his death a singer at the opera, 
named Nourrit, appeared on the stage with one of his sons, 
who had inherited his physical constitution as well as his pleasing 
voice ; and in a play with a plot like that of the Menczchnii, the 
extraordinary resemblance of the son to the father added a 
hundred-fold interest to the endless misunderstandings with which 
the play was filled. 1 These hereditary resemblances have some- 
times led to the most unexpected and most romantic adventures, 
so that it is not surprising that Marryat has turned them to 
account in his novel, ' Japhet in Search of a Father' 

It is still more singular that this resemblance between parents 
and children may undergo such metamorphoses as shall cause the 
child to resemble at one time the father, and at another the 



1 P. Lucas, Traiti Physiologique et Philosophique de VHSrSditS Naturelle, 
vol. i. p. 195- 



Introduction. 



mother. Girou de Buzareingues, in his work De la Generation, 
containing some curious facts observed by him, tells us that he 
knew two brothers who in early life resembled their mother, while 
their sister resembled the father. These resemblances were such as 
to strike all who saw them. ' But now, ' says he, ' and ever since 
their youth, the two boys resemble the father, while the daughter 
has ceased to be like him.' This same author was led, in conse- 
quence of numerous observations, to believe that changes of this 
kind are more frequent and more thorough in the case of boys 
than in that of girls. 

The system of intentional and conscious selection has been 
applied even to man. Frederick William I., the father of Fred- 
erick the Great, who was noted for his love of colossal men, dealt v 
with his regiment of giants as stock-breeders deal with their 
cattle. He would not allow his guards to marry women of stature 
inferior to their own. Haller used to boast of his ' belonging to 
one of those races whose members, by reason of their imposing 
stature, seem born to rule other men.' 

Heredity may be also traced in all that concerns the com- 
plexion of the skin, and the shape and size of the body. Thus, 
so truly is obesity the result of an organic . predisposition, that it 
has often been known to make its appearance amid privations, 
and under all the disadvantages of hard labour and poverty. 

Heredity influences the internal conformation no less than 
the external structure. Nothing is more undisputed than the 
heredity of the form, size, and anomalies of the osseous system ; 
and universal everyday experience proves the heredity of all the 
proportions of the cranium, thorax, pelvis, vertebral column, and 
the smallest bones of the skeleton. Even the heredity of excess 
or defect in the number of the vertebrae and the teeth has been 
ascertained. (Lucas.) The circulatory, digestive, and muscular 
systems obey the same laws which govern the transmission of the 
other internal systems of the organism. There are some families 
in which the heart and the size of the principal blood-vessels are 
naturally very large ; others in which they are comparatively small ; 
and others, again, which present identical faults of conform- 
ation. Lastly — and this is a point that more nearly concerns us — 
heredity regulates the proportions of the nervous system. It is 



Heredity. 



evident in the general dimensions of the brain, the principal 
organ of that system ; it is very often apparent in the size, and 
even in the form, of the cerebral convolutions. This fact was 
observed by Gall, who thereby accounted for the transmission of 
mental faculties. We need not here dwell upon this point, for we 
shall have frequent occasion to revert to it in the course of the 
present work. 

Heredity of the internal elements occurs in the fluids of 
the organism, as well as in the solid parts : the blood is more 
abundant in some families than in others, and this superabundance 
transmits, or may transmit, to the members of such families, a pre- 
disposition to apoplexy, hemorrhage, and inflammation. Thus there 
exists in some families such a liability to hemorrhage that even 
the prick of a pin may cause in them a flow of blood that 
cannot be checked. The same may be said with regard to the 
bile and the lymph. 

Nor is it merely, as might be supposed, the structure, whether 
internal or external, that is thus transmissible ; some quite 
peculiar characteristics of the mode of existence pass from parent 
to child. Heredity governs the subordinate no less than the domi- 
nant characteristics. Thus fecundity, length of life, and those 
purely personal characteristics which physicians call idiosyncrasies, 
are hereditarily transmitted. A few facts will confirm this. 

There is no doubt of the influence of heredity on the repro- 
ductive power. Some families are noted for their fecundity, and 
this fecundity descends either through the father or through the 
mother. 

A mother gave birth to twenty-four children, among them five 
girls, who in turn gave birth to forty-six children in all. The 
daughter of this woman's son, while still young, was brought to bed 
with her sixteenth child. (Girou.) The sons, daughters, and grand- 
children of a couple who were the parents of nineteen children 
were nearly all gifted, says Lucas, with the same fecundity. 

Several families belonging to the old French nobility possessed 
extraordinary powers of propagation. Anne de Montmorency 
(who when over seventy-five years of age was still able, at the 
battle of St. Denis, to break with his sword the teeth of the 
Scotch soldier who gave him his death-blow) was the father of 



Introduction* 



twelve children. Three of his ancestors — Mathieu I., Mathieu II., 
and Mathieu III. — had altogether eighteen children, of whom 
fifteen were boys. The son and grandson of the great Conde 
reckoned nineteen children between them ; and their great-grand- 
father, who was slain at Jarnac, had ten. The first four Guises 
had, in all, forty-three children, thirty of them boys. Achille de 
Harlay, father of the first President, had nine children ; his father, 
ten ; his great-grandfather, eighteen. In some families this fecun- 
dity has persisted for five or six generations. 1 

It is now generally understood that longevity depends far * 
less on race, climate, profession, mode of life or food, than on 
hereditary transmission. If we consult special treatises on this 
subject, we find centenarians as well among blacks as among 
whites ; in Russia and Scotland as in Italy and Spain ; among 
those who take the greatest care of their health as among those 
who have led the hardest lives. A collier in Scotland prolonged 
his hard and dreary existence over one hundred and thirty-three 
years, and worked in the mines after he was eighty. 

Similar facts are to be met with among prisoners, and even 
galley-slaves. ' The average of life,' says Dr. Lucas, ' plainly 
depends on locality, hygiene, and civilization; but individual 
longevity is entirely exempt from these conditions. Everything 
tends to show that long life is the result of an internal principle 
of vitality, which privileged individuals receive at their birth. It 
is so deeply imprinted in their nature as to make itself apparent 
in every part of their organization.' This kind of heredity has 
long been observed in England, where life-assurance companies 
require information as to the longevity of the ancestors of those 
who desire to effect an insurance. 

There are, also, on the other hand, many families in which 
the hair turns grey in early youth, and in which the vigour of the 
physical and intellectual faculties fails prematurely. In others, early 
death is of such common occurrence that only a few individuals 
can escape it by great precaution. In the Turgot family the 
fifty-ninth year was rarely passed. The man who made that family 



1 Benoiston de Chateauneuf, Memoir e sur la Duree des Families Nobles en 
France. 



Heredity. 



illustrious, when he saw that fatal term approaching, remarked — 
though he had then every appearance of health and strength — that 
it was time for him to put his affairs in order, and to finish the 
work he had then in hand, because in his family it was usual to 
die at that age. He died in fact at the age of fifty-three. 

The immunity from contagious diseases, and especially from 
yC small-pox, with which some families are endowed, is a well-estab- 
lished fact. 

Heredity may transmit muscular strength, and the various forms 
of motor energy. In ancient times there were families of 
athletes, and there have been families of prize-fighters. The 
( recent researches of Galton as to wrestlers and oarsmen show that 
/ the victors generally belong to a small number of families among 
whom strength and skill are hereditary. As for motor energy, 
a point of special importance in horses, experience long ago taught 
breeders that speed on the turf — just like faulty action, or crib- 
biting — is transmitted. Among men there are families nearly all 
of whose members are possessed of exquisite dexterity and grace 
of movement. Heredity has oftentimes transmitted a talent for 
dancing, of which the celebrated Vestris family is an example. 

It is the same with regard to the voice. Every animal possesses 
the voice peculiar to its kind ; but even individual characteristics 
are transmitted; as, for instance, stammering, speaking through the 
nose, and lisping. There are many families of singers, and there 
are also families that have no ear at all for melody. Loquacity, too, 
is hereditary : — ' Most of the children of talkative persons/ says 
Dr. Lucas, ' are chatterboxes from the cradle. Words — idealess, 
aimless, and unbridled— appear in them to be prompted by a sort of 
elastic spring over which they have no control. We once saw at a 
friend's house a servant-girl of irrepressible loquacity. She would 
talk to people, who could scarcely get in a word edgewise ; she 
would talk to dumb beasts and to inanimate things ; she would 
talk aloud to herself. She had to be sent away. " But/ 7 said she 
to her employer, " it is no fault of mine : it comes to me from 
my father ; the same fault in him drove my mother distracted ; 
and one of his brothers was like me.'" 

The heredity of anomalies of organization is a well-ascertained 
fact. One of the strangest and best known instances of this is 



Introduction. 



the case of Edward Lambert, whose whole body, with the exception 
of the face, the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, was 
covered with a sort of carapace of horny excrescences which 
rattled against each other. He was the father of six children, all 
of whom, from the age of six weeks, presented the same singularity. 
The only one of these who survived transmitted it to all his sons \ 
and this transmission, going from male to male, was kept up 
during five generations. 1 Albinism, rickets, lameness, ectrodactylism 
and polydactylism, harelip — in fact, all deviations from the type, 
whether they be the result of an excess or of an arrest of organic 
development — are transmissible. These facts are of great interest, 
as showing that the individual type is subject to the law of heredity, 
no less than the specific type. 

It is a disputed question whether we must conclude that de- 
viations from the specific type, anomalies of all kinds — such as 
strabismus, myopia, atrophy and hypertrophy of members — remain 
fixed for ever, or that heredity in such cases is only of a restricted 
and temporary nature. These individual deviations from law are 
sometimes transmitted, sometimes not. Experience would appear 
to show that there is a tendency towards a return to the primitive 
type. Thus, in the Colburn family, which presented one of the 
most curious instances of sexdigitism — the members of this family 
had each a supernumerary finger and toe — the anomaly continued 
through four generations; but, says Burdach, 2 the normal was 
steadily gaining on the abnormal. 

The ratio was — 

i st generation, as i to 35 
2nd „ „ 1 „ 14 

3 r d » » 1 » 3i 

The return, therefore, to the normal type took place rapidly. 
This brings us to the important and difficult question of the 
heredity of acquired modifications. All of which we have spoken — 
the transmission of internal and external structure, of longevity, 
fecundity, and idiosyncrasies — is involved in the very nature of the 
being as virtually constituted by the act of generation, and belongs 

1 Philosophical Transactions, vol. xvii. and vol. xlix. 
8 Physiologie, vol. ii. p. 251. 



8 Heredity. 



to its essence; hence it is perfectly natural that all these 
qualities and modifications should be transmitted to its descend- 
ants. But man cannot, any more than other animals, live without 
contracting habits ; without undergoing, under the influence of 
circumstances, or from an excess or deficiency in the exercise of 
each organ, modifications of all kinds, which remain fixed in him. 
Are these transmitted ? Are they destined to perish with the 
individual, or do they become in his descendants a new, an ac- 
quired character ? The brain, for example, like every other organ, 
is developed by exercise. If this increase, whether of size or 
of energy, is transmissible, some important consequences for the 
mental faculties must be the result ; progress will then be deter- 
mined, not only outwardly and traditionally, but inwardly and 
organically. 

We will consider this question in the course of the work ; for 
the present we consider only the physiological phenomena. 

Habit is defined to be an acquired disposition. We ask if any 
purely individual habits are transmitted. Instances of this are cited. 
Girou de Buzareingues observes that he had known a man who 
had the habit, when in bed, of lying on his back and crossing the 
right leg over the left. One of his daughters had the same habit 
from birth; she constantly assumed that posture in the cradle, 
notwithstanding the resistance offered by the napkins. ' I know 
many girls/ says he, 'who resemble their fathers, and who 
have derived from them extraordinary habits, which cannot be 
attributed either to imitation or to training, and boys who have 
habits derived from their mothers. 1 But it is impossible to enter 
upon any details on this subject' Darwin notes the following 
instance, which came under his own observation : — a boy had the 
singular habit, when pleased, of rapidly moving his fingers parallel 
to each other; and when much excited, of raising both hands, 
with the fingers still moving, to the sides of his face on a level with 
the eyes; this boy, when almost an old man, could still hardly 
resist this trick when much pleased, but, from its absurdity, con- 
cealed it. He had eight children. Of these, a girl, when pleased, 
at the age of four and a half years, moved her fingers in exactly 



De la Generation, 282. 



Introduction. 



the same way \ and, what is still odder, when much excited she 
raised both her hands, with her fingers still moving, to the sides of 
her face, in exactly the same way as her father had done. Hand- 
writing depends on several physical and mental habits, and we 
often see a great resemblance between the handwriting of a father 
and a son. Even those who have no great powers of observation 
must often have remarked this. ' Hofacker, in Germany, has 
remarked that handwriting is hereditary.' The same remark will 
apply to France \ l and it has even been asserted that English 
boys, when taught to write in France, naturally cling to their 
English manner of writing.' 1 

What is true of habits is also true of anomalies accidentally 
acquired, — that they are transmissible. Thus a man whose right 
hand had suffered an injury had one of his fingers badly set. He 
had several sons, each of whom had that same finger crooked. 
(Blumenbach.) Artificial deformities, too, are transmissible. 
Three tribes in Peru — the Aymaras, the Huancas, and the 
Ghinchas — had each their own peculiar mode of deforming the 
heads of their children, and this deformity has since remained. 
The Esquimaux, says M. de Quatrefages, cut off the tails of the 
dogs they harness to their sledges; the pups are often born 
tailless. 

Notwithstanding these facts, the transmission of acquired 
modifications appears to be very restricted, even when occurring 
in both of the parents. A deaf-mute married to a deaf-mute has 
children who can both hear and speak. The necessity of perform- 
ing circumcision on Jews shows that an acquired modification, often 
repeated, is not therefore hereditary. Deviations from a type, 
after having subsisted for generations, return to the normal state ; 
so that many naturalists hold it as a rule that accidental modifi- 
cations are not perpetuated. 

This is very different to the law formulated by Lamarck : — 
' Whatever Nature has enabled individuals to gain or to lose, 
under the influence of circumstances to which their race has been 
long exposed, is preserved, by generation, for the new individuals 



1 Darwin, Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii. p. 6. 
Edition, 1868. 



io Hei'edity. 



which descend from them, provided the changes acquired are 
common to the two sexes, or to those which have produced new 
individuals.' 1 

Still, these two opposite opinions, both of which may be sup- 
ported by facts, can be reconciled if we bear in mind that there 
are modifications which, by their very nature, are in antagonism 
with everything around them, and for which, in consequence, the 
conditions of existence grow more and more difficult ; just as there 
are others which, when in conformity with everything around them, 
may become permanent by either natural or artificial selection : 
so that all things conspire to blot out the former class of modifi- 
cations, and to perpetuate the latter. We shall meet this difficulty 
again, when treating of psychological heredity, and will there 
consider it more fully. 

We have now to speak of the last form of heredity — that of 
disease. This seems to have been observed from the foundation 
of the art of medicine — in all times, in every land, and in every 
nation. Even the Greek physicians recognized hereditary diseases 
(vqgoi icXrjpovo/iUKai). And yet in modern times the heredity of 
disease has given rise to all manner of debates among medical 
men. It would be beyond our subject, and beyond our 
power, to discuss this point. It is enough to say that the 
question appears to be substantially settled by the fact that the 
sturdiest opponents of morbid heredity admit, if not the heredity 
of disease itself, at least the heredity of a disposition to it. In 
Dr. Lucas's work on Heredity will be found facts of all kinds, 
sufficiently numerous and sufficiently clear to warrant a conclusion. 

This hasty physiological sketch will show that the law of 
heredity influences every form of vital energy — a fact which is 
generally known and admitted. Is the same to be said with 
regard to the psychological aspect of the question ? This we pro- 
pose now to consider, and to begin with the study of the facts. 

1 In regard to the physiological side of this controversy, see the Bulletins 
de la Societe a" Anthropologic, tome i. p. 339, and particularly p. 551, seq. ; 
tome ii., De V Her'edite des Anomalies. 



PART FIRST. 

THE FACTS. 

Rassemblons des faits pour nous dormer des i&6es.—I>ufton. 



'3 



CHAPTER I. 

HEREDITY OF INSTINCTS. 
I. 

When we speak of instinct, our first difficulty is to define the 
term. Not to enumerate here all the various significations of 
the word as used in ordinary language, it is employed in at least 
three different senses even by naturalists and philosophers, whose 
language has to be more precise than that of other people. Some- 
times instinct is intended to signify the automatic, almost mechan- 
ical, and probably unconscious action of animals, in pursuance of 
an object determined by their organization, and specific characters. 
Again, instinct is made synonymous with desire, inclination, pro- 
pensity ; as when we speak of good or evil instincts, a thievish or 
murderous instinct. Finally, we sometimes comprise under the term 
instinct all the psychological phenomena occurring in animals, and 
all forms of mental activity inferior to those of man. This latter 
signification of the word is plainly the result of our unwillingness 
to attribute intellect to brutes ; and thus, contrary to all reason, 
we confound with blind and unconscious impulses the conscious 
acts which every animal performs under the guidance of its indi- 
vidual experience, 1 and which, consequently, are analogous to those 
which, in our own case, we call intelligent or intellectual acts. 

Although, in our opinion, instinct and intelligence are one and 
the same, as we will try hereafter to show, and though the differ- 
ence between them is one not of kind, but only of degree ; still 
we will employ the word instinct here in its first signification only 
which alone we hold to be exact and in conformity with etymology. 
We must, for the sake of greater precision, begin with a good defi- 
nition of this term ; but, unfortunately, no such definition has yet 



1 For instance, the act performed by a dog carried far from his home, when 
from among a score of roads he selects the one which will bring him back. 



14 Heredity, 



been found. Still we may, with a contemporary German philo- 
sopher, define instinct to be 'an act conformed to an end, but 
without consciousness of that end ; ' 1 or we may say, with Darwin, 
that 'an action which we ourselves should require experience to 
enable us to perform, when performed by an animal, more espe- 
cially by a very young one, without any experience, and when 
performed by many individuals in the same way without their 
knowing for what purpose it is performed, is usually said to be 
instinctive.' 2 

If, instead of denning instinct, we endeavour to determine its 
characteristics, not one of which perhaps is absolutely certain and 
unquestioned, we find a general agreement as to the following : 

Instinct is innate, i.e. anterior to all individual experience. 
Whereas intelligence is developed slowly by accumulated experi- 
ences, instinct is perfect from the first. The duckling hatched by 
a hen makes straight for the water ; the squirrel, before it knows 
anything of winter, lays up a store of nuts. A bird hatched in a 
cage will, when given its freedom, build for itself a nest like that 
of its parents, out of the same materials, and of the same shape. 

Intelligence gropes about, tries this way and that, misses its 
object, commits mistakes and corrects them : instinct advances with 
a mechanical certainty. Hence comes its unconscious character ; 
it knows nothing either of ends, or of the means of attaining 
them; it implies no comparison, judgment, or choice. All seems 
directed by thought, without ever arriving at thought ; and if this 
phenomenon appear strange, it must be observed that analogous 
states occur in ourselves. All that we do from habit — walking, 
writing, or practising a mechanical art, for instance — all these, and 
many other very complex acts, are performed without consciousness. 

Instinct appears stationary. It does not, like intelligence, seem 
to grow and decay, to gain and to lose. It does not improve. If 
it does not remain perfectly invariable, at least it varies only within 
very narrow limits; and though this question has been warmly 
debated in our day, and is yet unsettled, we may yet say that in 
instinct immutability is the law, variation the exception. 

1 Hartmann, Philosophic des Unbcwussten, p. 54. Berlin, 1869. 

2 Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 255. Fifth Edition, 1869. 



Heredity of Instincts. 1 5 



Such are the admitted characters of instinct Though none 
of them is out of the reach of minute criticism ; though none 
of them is absolutely true, still they are sufficiently exact to serve 
to distinguish instinct from all other psychological phenomena. 

Instinct, so defined, is, beyond all question, transmissible, and 
subject to the law of heredity. The animal inherits the psychical 
dispositions, no less than the physiological constitutions of its 
parents. The naturalist takes account of the former character- 
istics, as well as of the latter. In his eyes it is as essential for the 
bee to extract the pollen of flowers, construct cells and in them 
deposit her honey, as for her to possess mandibles, six feet, and 
four wings. A worker-bee with the instincts of an ant would 
appear to him as strange a thing as a bee with wing-sheaths and 
eight feet. Every animal has two chief functions — one, nutrition, 
which preserves the individual; another, generation, which pre- 
serves the species. The latter transmits instincts together with 
physical forms — generation is moral as well as material. The 
beaver transmits to its young its anatomical and physiological 
characters as a rodent mammal, its constructive instincts, and 
architectural talent. 

Thus we find at the outset a vast number of psychological facts 
— instinctive actions, strictly subject to the laws of hereditary trans- 
mission. It needs no long reflection to see how large is the 
domain of instinct : the Invertebrata seem to be completely re- 
stricted to this form of mental activity. In the sub-kingdom of the 
Vertebrata, the inferior classes, such as the Fishes, Batrachians, 
Reptiles, Birds, have oftentimes no other means save instinct, of 
supporting life, of attack, defence, and recognition of enemies. 
Finally, among Mammals, and even in Man, instinct gradually 
diminishes, but never entirely disappears. Its domain, therefore, 
is co-extensive with animal life ; and this vast domain is governed 
by the laws of heredity. 

Since it is an evident fact, universally admitted, that heredity is 
the invariable rule of the transmission of instincts, we need not 
cite instances to confirm our position. The tenacity of instincts is 
so great, and their hereditary transmission so certain, that some- 
times they are found to outlive for centuries the conditions of life to 
which they are adapted. ' We have reason to believe,' says Darwin, 



1 6 Heredity, 



'that aboriginal habits are long retained under domestication. 
Thus with the common ass we see signs of its original desert life 
in its strong dislike to cross the smallest stream of water, and in its 
pleasure in rolling in the dust. The same strong dislike to cross a 
stream is common to the camel, which has been domesticated from 
a very ancient period. Young pigs, though so tame, sometimes 
squat when frightened, and thus try to conceal themselves even in 
an open and bare place. Young turkeys, and occasionally even 
young fowls, when the hen gives the danger-cry, run away and 
try to hide themselves, like young partridges or pheasants, in 
order that their mother may take flight, of which she has lost the 
power. The musk-duck, in its native country, often perches and 
roosts on- trees, and our domesticated musk-ducks, though sluggish 

birds, are fond of perching on the tops of barns, walls, etc 

We know that the dog, however well and regularly fed, often 
buries, like the fox, any superfluous food \ we see him turning 
round and round on a carpet, as if to trample down grass to form 

a bed In the delight with which lambs and kids crowd 

together and frisk on the smallest hillock, we see a vestige of their 
former alpine habits. 



y 1 



II. 

Instead of dwelling unnecessarily on the heredity of natural and 
primitive instincts, it will be more instructive to inquire whether 
acquired instincts are transmissible. We have already said, when 
giving, according to F. Cuvier and Flourens, the characteristics 
generally attributed to instinctive acts, that none of them are abso- 
lutely true. Thus, instinct is not always invariable. The beaver 
changes, according to circumstances, the site and form of his house, 
and from being a builder becomes a miner. The bee can modify 
her plan of construction, and substitute for hexagonal cells penta- 
gonal cavities. In the Island of Goree the swallows remain through 
the whole year, because the warmth of the climate enables them to 
find food at all seasons. In many species the mode of nest- 
building varies according to the nature of the soil, the locality, and 
the temperature of the country. Instinct is certainly not as pliant 
an instrument as intelligence ; it cannot, like intelligence, adapt itself 



1 Variation^ etc., vol. i. p. 180. 



Heredity of Instincts. 1 7 

to all media, conform to all circumstances, or vary and modify its 
actions in a thousand ways ; yet it is capable of modification within 
certain limits, when subjected to strong and lasting influences. 

Two causes chiefly produce these variations : external conditions 
and domestication. Climate, soil, food; the dangers which habitually 
surround the animal, and the impressions it receives, modify its 
organism and consequently its instincts. The action of man is still 
more powerful on the animal than that of Nature : by training, man 
fashions and bends it to his needs or his wishes. It is not for us to 
inquire here how these acquired or modified instincts are produced. 
We have only to ask whether they are hereditary. Experience 
answers in the affirmative ; many facts show that acquired instincts, 
as well as those which are natural, are transmitted by heredity. 
Such are the following : — 

G. Leroy observes that in districts where a sharp war is waged 
against the fox, the cubs, on first coming out of their earths, and 
before they can have acquired any experience, are more cautious, 
crafty, and suspicious than are old foxes in places where no attempt 
is made to trap them. This he explains by the hypothesis of a 
language among animals. F. Cuvier has furnished the solution of 
the enigma by referring the fact to the heredity of modifications 
which are acquired by instinct. There is no doubt that the 
instinct of fear is acquired in many wild animals, and transmitted 
to their descendants. Knight, who for sixty years devoted 
himself to systematic observation of this class of facts, says 
that during that time the habits of the English woodcock under- 
went great changes, and that its fear of man was considerably 
increased by its transmission through several generations. The 
same author discovered similar changes of habit, even in bees. 
Darwin has established the fact that animals living in desert 
islands gradually acquire a fear of man, in proportion as they 
become acquainted with our methods of destroying them. He 
says that in England large birds are much more shy than small 
ones, and this, no doubt, because they are much more persecuted 
by man. The proof that this is the reason of the difference is 
found in the fact that in uninhabited islands large birds are not 
any more timid than small ones. 1 



1 Origin of Species, p. 260. Fifth Edition, 1869. Lucas, ii. 482. 



c 



1 8 Heredity. 



When an animal is capable of education, that is, when its original 
instincts are capable of modification, it usually requires three or 
four generations to fix the results of training and to prevent a 
return to the instincts of the wild state. If we try to hatch the 
eggs of wild ducks under tame ducks, the ducklings will scarce have 
left the egg when they obey the instinct of their race, and take their 
flight. If they be prevented from flying away, and kept for repro- 
duction, it will be several generations before we have tame ducks. 
The same may be said of free, or wild herds of horses. Their 
colts are broken with great difficulty, and even after taming they 
are far less docile than horses born in a state of domestication. 
Nay, even the mongrel progeny of wild and domesticated horses, 
or of wild and domesticated reindeer, take three or four genera- 
tions before they entirely give up the shy habits of their natural 
state. On the other hand, colts bred of a well-broken sire and 
dam oftentimes come into the world with a marked aptitude for 
training; and some horse-trainers have even proposed to select 
brood stock exclusively from among horses that have been prac- 
tised in the circus. 

Originally man had considerable trouble in taming the animals 
which are now domesticated ; and his work would have been in 
vain had not heredity come to his aid. It may be said that after 
man has modified a wild animal to his will, there goes on in its 
progeny a silent conflict between two heredities, the one tending 
to fix the acquired modifications, and the other to preserve the 
primitive instincts. The latter often get the mastery, and only 
after several generations is training sure of victory. But we 
may see that in either case heredity always asserts its rights. 

Among the higher animals, which are possessed not only of 
instinct but also of intelligence, nothing is more common than to 
see mental dispositions, which have evidently been acquired, so 
fixed by heredity that they are confounded with instinct, so spon- 
taneous and so automatic do they become. Young pointers have 
been known to point the first time they were taken out, sometimes 
even better than dogs that had been for a long time in training. 
The habit of saving life is hereditary in breeds that have been 
brought up to it, as is also the shepherd-dog's habit of moving 
around the flock and guarding it 



Hei'edity of Instincts. 19 

Knight has shown, experimentally, the truth of the proverb " a 
good hound is bred so." He took every care that when the pups 
were first taken into the field they should receive no guidance from 
older dogs. Yet the very first day one of the pups stood trem- 
bling with anxiety, having his eyes fixed and all his muscles strained 
at the partridges which their parents had been trained to point. A 
spaniel, belonging to a breed that had been trained to woodcock- 
shooting, knew perfectly w T ell from the first how to act like an old 
dog, avoiding places where the soil was frozen, and where it was 
therefore useless to seek the game, as in such places there is 
no scent. Finally, a young polecat-terrier was thrown into a state 
of great excitement the first time he ever saw one of these animals, 
while a spaniel remained perfectly calm. 

In South America, according to Roulin, dogs belonging to a 
breed that has long been trained to the dangerous chase of the 
peccary, when taken for the first time into the woods, know the 
tactics to adopt quite as well as the old dogs, and that without any 
instruction. Dogs of other races, and unacquainted with the 
tactics, are killed at once, no matter how strong they may be. 
The American greyhound, instead of leaping at the throat of the 
stag, attacks him by the belly and throws him over, as his an- 
cestors had been trained to do in hunting down the Indians. 

Thus, then, heredity transmits acquired modification no less than 
natural instincts. There is, however, an important difference to be 
noted : the heredity of instincts admits of no exceptions, while in 
that of modifications there are many. It is only when variations 
have been firmly rooted ; when, having become organic, they con- 
stitute a second nature, which supplants the first ; when, like 
instinct, they have assumed a mechanical character, that they can 
be transmitted. If we note these differences in passing, we shall 
find them lead us hereafter to important conclusions. 

in. 

We have just shown, from indisputable facts, that heredity governs 
the transmission of instincts, whether acquired or primitive. It 
might seem that in this portion of our inquiry, which has to deal 
only with the facts, we ought to be content with that exposition of 
the case. But certain theories, put forth by distinguished writers 



20 Heredity. 



in our own day, attribute to heredity so important a part in the 
formation of instincts, that they cannot be passed by in silence. 
Indeed, according to these theories, heredity is one of the essential 
factors of psychological development ; and so mighty and supreme 
is its influence, that it not only preserves instincts, but also creates 
them. Hence we are obliged to study more closely the nature of 
instinct, and to abandon the domain of facts, in order to enter into 
that of causes, that is, of hypotheses. This is to be regretted, for 
it is no trifling thing to attempt cursorily a theory of instinct. To 
us it seems that there is not in the whole field of psychology a 
more intricate question than this ; and Schelling did not at all 
exaggerate when he said, — 'For the thinker there are no phe- 
nomena more important than the phenomena of animal instinct, 
nor is there any better criterion of true philosophy.' 

We will restrict our brief inquiry into this subject to two 
questions — What is instinct ? and, What is its origin ? 

To the first question we reply : Instinct is an unconscious 
mode of intelligence. To the second : It is possible that instincts 
are only habits fixed by heredity. 

It cannot be denied that it is only within the past hundred years 
that instinct has been seriously studied. The present century 
especially has done much. In past times we find only confused 
views and ingenious paradoxes : but naturalists have now removed 
the question to its proper sphere, that of observation and experi- 
ment. But when we study instinct from the naturalist's standpoint, 
the first thing that strikes us is the perfect adaptation of organs to 
instinct. 'An animal's form corresponds perfectly with its 
habits ; it desires only what it can attain by means of its organs, 
and its organs do not incite it to anything for which it has not 
a propensity. The mole, destined by its needs to live under- 
ground, has in its organs nothing that would lead it aside from 
that disposition. Although it can see, still its sight lacks precision, 
because its eyes are small, and surrounded by a close growth 
of hairs. Its fore-paws are altogether organized for burrowing, 
not for walking. The paw is so formed and so related to the 
fore-arm, that it can hardly be used for locomotion without 
delving. The sloth, which walks upon the outer edge of the feet 
with the toes doubled in, is extremely tardy of movement on level 



Heredity of Instincts. 2 1 



ground, a circumstance which gave rise to the erroneous idea that 
nature's treatment of the animal had been that of a stepmother. 
But this is not the case : the sloth is as perfect in its kind 
as all other animals ; its limbs are so arranged as to enable it to 
climb, and to live in trees. The spider's legs are so arranged and 
organized that it moves with difficulty over a plane surface : these 
organs are intended for use on a line or a thread, and the spider 
carries about the materials from which to spin such thread. 1 In 
general we might say : As is the organism, so are the instincts ; 
and vice versa. Given the instincts of an animal, a good naturalist 
can infer its organization ; or, given its organization, he can infer 
its instincts. 

This intimate correlation between the physiological and the mental 
constitution leads naturally to the conclusion that the instincts 
of an animal result from its organization. Each organ, even each 
tissue, has its special function to discharge, and this tendency to 
the discharge of functions constitutes the need or instinct; the same 
organ or the same tissue communicates to the being in which it 
exists this same need; each additional organ or tissue adds a 
new need or instinct. Hence the instinct of an animal is the sum 
of the instincts of its various organs ; it is their necessary — their 
inevitable consequence, and it comes into play under influences 
to which the animal is unconsciously subject. 

This explanation is simple enough, but may not be perfectly 
sound. It is certain that instinct depends on organization, but it 
is very questionable whether it results exclusively from it. This is 
a region where the phenomena are so complex that physiology 
is insufficient to explain them all, for here evidently occurs the 
mysterious transition from the purely organic to the mental life, by 
means of reflex action, which is principally physiological, and of 
instinct, which is principally psychological. This transition is 
insensible and incomprehensible, and serves well to show that any 
line of demarcation drawn between psychology and physiology is 
arbitrary, and that mental life is slowly and gradually disengaged 
from physical life, so that it is impossible to tell where or how 
it has its rise. Neither can mechanism — which seems to be the 

1 Miiller, Physiologie, ii. 108. 



2 2 Heredity. 



ultimate, the irresolvable character of all vital phenomena — prove 
sufficient to explain instinct. For if mechanism explains the lower 
forms of spiritual life, it must also explain the higher — the 
difference is one only of degree and of complexity ; but then, also, 
if mechanism does not explain the higher, neither can it explain 
the lower. It has been said that thought is only translated 
motion, and that it is but the highest form of the universal 
mechanism. This theory is no doubt very alluring, inasmuch as 
it enables us to bring under one law all the phenomena of the 
universe, from simple impact up to the most complicated events of 
social life and history. But it is only an hypothesis, which is 
rendered doubtful by the fact that we can perceive no equivalence 
between thought and motion. Each appears to us as an ultimate 
fact, sui generis, and not reducible into the other. 

To these theoretic considerations we may add others drawn 
from facts. If organization is the cause of instincts, then, as it 
varies, so must they. But observation shows that this is not 
the case. Observation teaches us that the correlation between 
instincts and organs is not absolute ; that we may have the same 
organization with different instincts, and the same instincts with 
different organizations. Thus, the European beaver, which is 
hardly to be distinguished from the American, burrows like the 
mole, whereas the other builds houses. All spiders have the same 
apparatus for weaving their webs, and yet one spider weaves a 
circular web, another weaves a web of irregular form; a third weaves 
no web, but inhabits holes, simply making a door. Birds have their 
beaks and feet as their only instruments for nest building, yet how 
great are the differences of the form, architecture, and position of 
nests. 

Let it be granted for the moment that the opinion we are 
discussing is correct, although in the present state of our knowledge 
it is a mere hypothesis. Science has accustomed us to revelations 
so unexpected that it may be rash to say that the opinion is 
untenable. Assuming, then, that instinct is not the result of the 
organization, we shall still have to study its nature ; for this 
hypothesis only enlightens us as to its cause. It tells us whence it 
comes, but not what it is. The reduction of all physical phenomena 
to motion does not bar the separate study of electricity, of sound, 



Heredity of Instincts. 23 



heat, and light ; nor would the reduction of all psychical phenomena 
to motion bar the separate study of instinct, sensation, imagination, 
will, etc. In any case, therefore, the question remains, What is 
instinct ? 

Instinct is an unconscious form of intelligence, determined by 
the organization. 

We intend to give in another place (Part III. chap. i. § 2) a 
detailed exposition of unconscious psychological phenomena, and 
to insist upon a class of facts that have been somewhat overlooked, 
though they probably contain much instruction for us. For the 
present, we would merely observe that, besides the conscious action 
of the mind, there is also an unconscious action, with a far wider 
sphere ; that consciousness is an habitual, though not necessary, 
accompaniment of our mental life; that perhaps every one of these 
phenomena — instinct, sensation, perception, memory, etc. — is by 
turns conscious and unconscious. This consideration will 
probably aid us to throw light on the problem of instinct. 

Suppose a highly civilized people, among whom the division of 
labour is carried to great lengths ; that it contains architects, poets, 
engineers, musicians, all incapable of any work save that which 
constitutes the specialty of each ; that the architect can only 
build houses, and only a certain kind of house ; the engineer only 
bridges, and such or such a kind of bridge ; that the poet can only 
make verses — let us suppose, further, that each of them works 
unconsciously. These acts will certainly be regarded as instinctive, 
and we may compare the architect to the beaver, the engineer to 
the bee and the ant, the weaver to the spider, the carpenter to 
the termite. The only characteristic of instinct wanting would 
be innateness. This hypothesis exhibits the metamorphosis of 
intellectual acts into instincts : we had only to restrict intelligence 
within narrow limits and to deprive it of consciousness ; we had to 
take away its suppleness and its manifold aptitudes, to impoverish, 
and, so to speak, to prune it. 

But this is only an hypothesis which might properly enough 
be rejected. To look more closely at the question, we take a 
familiar fact, one known to all — somnambulism. The sleep- 
walker walks, runs, waits at table, like Gassendi's valet, writes 
verses, copies music, composes and revises sermons, solves pro- 



24 Heredity. 



blems, even writes pages of philosophy, like Condillac. All this is 
done as well as and even better than in the waking state, and with 
as remarkable steadiness as in the case of instinct. The somnam- 
bulist, moreover, during the crisis, performs only acts which are 
habitual with him : the poet does not compose music, the musician 
does not write verses, nor did Condillac ever awake and find 
himself embroidering. Finally, it also resembles instinct, in that 
all its acts are performed unconsciously. If somnambulism were 
permanent and innate, it would be impossible to distinguish it 
from instinct. The resemblance was pointed out by Cuvier. 
'We can gain a clear notion of instinct,' he well observes, ' only by 
admitting that animals have in their sensorium images, or constant 
sensations, which determine their action, as ordinary and accidental 
sensations determine action in general. It is a sort of dream or 
vision, which haunts them constantly, and, so far as concerns their 
instinct, animals may be regarded as a kind of somnambulists.' 
' The organization of animals/ says Miiller, ' is singularly favour- 
able to the realization of the images, ideas, and inclinations which 
appear in the sensorium. As the internal and the external depend 
upon one and the same final cause, the form of the animal perfectly 
corresponds with its propensities. Thus, the instinctive pro- 
pensities of the spider represent to it, like a sort of dream, the 
theme of its actions — the construction of its web.' 

Here, again, in the case of somnambulism, all that is needed 
in order to bring about the metamorphosis of intellectual into 
instinctive acts is, that intelligence should be reduced to a few 
special acts (making verses, composing music, or the like), and 
that it should become unconscious. The phenomena of habit, 
which have been so justly compared with those of instinct, exhibit 
equally the transformation of intelligence into instinct. So soon 
as any intellectual operation, by repetition (that is to say, by 
restricting its domain), has become automatic (that is to say, 
unconscious), then the act is habitual or instinctive. 

Hence it is less difficult than is generally supposed to conceive 
how intelligence may become instinct : we might even say that, 
leaving out of consideration the character of innateness, to which 
we will return, we have seen the metamorphosis take place. 
There can, then, be no ground for making instinct a faculty apart, 



Heredity of Instincts, 25 

sui generis, a phenomenon so mysterious, so strange, that usually 
no other explanation of it is offered but that of attributing it to 
the direct act of the Deity. This whole mistake is the result of a 
defective psychology, which makes no account of the unconscious 
activity of the soul. 

But we are so accustomed to contrast the characters of instinct 
with those of intelligence — to say that instinct is innate, invariable, 
automatic, while intelligence is something acquired, variable, spon- 
taneous — that it looks, at first, paradoxical to assert that instinct 
and intelligence are identical. 

It is said that instinct is innate. But if, on the one hand, we 
bear in mind that many instincts are acquired, and that, accord- 
ing to a theory to be afterwards explained, all instincts are 
only hereditary habits ; if, on the other hand, we observe that 
intelligence is in some sense held to be innate by all modern 
schools of philosophy — which agree to reject the hypothesis of the 
tabula rasa, and to accept either latent ideas or a priori forms of 
thought, or preordinations of the nervous system and of the 
organism — it will be seen that this character of innateness does not 
constitute an absolute distinction between instinct and intelligence. 

It is true that intelligence is variable ; but so also is instinct, as 
we have seen. In winter, the Rhine beaver plasters his wall to 
windward : once he was a builder, now a burrower ; once he lived 
in society, now he is solitary. 1 Intelligence can scarcely be more 
variable. Of this we have elsewhere given other instances. 
Instinct may be modified, lost, and re-awakened. 

Although intelligence is, as a rule, conscious, it may also become 
unconscious and automatic, without losing its identity. Neither 
is instinct always so blind, so mechanical, as is supposed, for at 
times it is at fault. The wasp that has faultily trimmed a leaf of 
its paper begins again. The bee only gives the hexagonal form 
to its cell after many attempts and alterations. It is difficult to 
believe that the loftier instincts of the higher animals are not 
accompanied by at least a confused consciousness. There is, 
therefore, no absolute distinction between instinct and intelli- 
gence ; there is not a single characteristic which, seriously 

1 Bulletin de la Societe cC Anthropologic, 2 e Serie, tome I, p. 307. 



26 Hei'edity. 



considered, remains the exclusive property of either. The 
contrast established between instinctive acts and intellectual acts 
is, nevertheless, perfectly true, but only when we compare the 
extremes. As instinct rises, it approaches intelligence : as intelli- 
gence descends, it approaches instinct This must not be 
forgotten ; and while differences are borne in mind, the resem- 
blances also must be noted. 

Intelligence is a mirror which reflects the universe. It is a 
wonderful instrument, and is in some sense infinite as the world 
itself, which it encompasses and measures. By the accumulated 
progress of generations it tends to correspond more perfectly 
with its object. In its development through time and space, and 
through the infinite variety of living creatures, it ever pursues its 
ideal, that is, to comprehend all things, from common phe- 
nomena up to the eternal and sovereign laws of the Cosmos. 
Instinct is much more humble : it reflects the world only at a 
small angle ; its relations are limited ; it is adapted to a restricted 
medium ; it is fitted only to a small number of circumstances. 
Instead of being an immense palace, whence a boundless horizon 
may be seen, it is a lowly cottage, with only one window. But if 
we look at both instinct and intelligence from without, their 
processes are the same. 

Nor is it surprising that instinct should be always restricted to 
the same order of phenomena, since, being unconscious, it cannot 
compare, deliberate, select, or improve. ' 

We have still to inquire whence comes the infinite variety of 
instincts; why each species views the world at one particular angle, 
and at no other. These differences are, no doubt, owing to the 
organization ; to enter on such inquiries here would carry us too 
far from our subject, to which we must return. 

iv. 

A far more difficult question than that of the nature of instincts 
is the question of their origin. Till now it has not been asked, 
and is only now logically proposed by the great scientific con- 
troversy on the origin and variations of species. It is clear that 
we cannot pretend to decide an open, perhaps unanswerable 
question, warmly disputed by great authorities. We only suggest 



Heredity of Instincts. 2 7 



an hypothesis ; but as it is founded on heredity, and assigns to 
it a very prominent part, it is impossible not to state it 

The reader is aware that a theory sketched by De Maillet, 
Robinet, and especially Lamarck, accepted and modified by 
Darwin and Wallace in our own days, has gained the assent of 
many eminent men in England, Germany, and France. Accord- 
ing to this theory, species are variable, and are formed by the 
accumulation of slight differences, which have been fixed by here- 
dity. The genera and species now extant, however numerous 
they may be, are derived from three or four primitive types, per- 
haps from one only. It was only necessary that some variations 
should occur spontaneously. If these variations were adapted to 
new conditions of existence ; if they gave to the individual one 
more weapon to fight the battle of life, and if they have been 
transmitted by heredity, then a new species has been formed, 
which, under the continued action of the same causes, has 
departed more and more from the primordial type. Spontaneous 
variations, the struggle for life, selection, time, and heredity — these 
are the factors by the aid of which can be explained the evolution- 
of living creatures, the formation and disappearance of species. 

This bold hypothesis has thrown an entirely new light on 
instinct. Since in all animals the physical and the mental con- 
stitution are, as we have seen, correlated, if there were originally 
none but rudimentary organisms, instincts must then have been 
very rude. And again, since instinct, like the organism, presents 
spontaneous variations, and like it is subject to the laws of the 
struggle for life and heredity, we must conclude that if these 
causes explain the formation of species, they will also explain the 
formation of instincts. If a physical modification, by adapting an 
animal to new conditions, produces a deviation that may become 
fixed, because it constitutes a progress from antecedent states, the 
same will be true of mental modifications. Every variation of 
instinct that puts the animal in a better position to defend itself 
against new enemies, or to capture some new prey, will make it 
likely to survive under more complicated conditions. 

So long as species were regarded as fixed, the question of the 
origin of instincts could not be even raised. The matter appeared 
very simple : the species was sent into the world ready-made, with 



28 Heredity. 



all its physical and nforal characteristics. The Evolutionists, on 
the other hand, hold that instincts, as they now exist, are very 
complex, formed by the gradual accumulations of time and heredity. 
They must be subjected to a careful analytical process, each 
stratum must be taken apart ; by comparison, induction, and 
analogy we must determine which are of more recent formation, 
and must descend from these, step by step, to the more ancient 
strata. Proceeding thus from the complex to the simple, we arrive 
at certain very lowly mental manifestations, which we may regard 
as the source from which the entire series is derived. 

Thus we have, at the outset, a minimum of intelligence, a some- 
thing which plays in mental life the part of the cell in physio- 
logical life ; then come actions and reflex actions, which by con- 
stant repetition are changed into habits and fixed by heredity; 
next we have variations, also passing into habits, and similarly fixed 
by heredity — in short, we have a sum of hereditary habits. Such, 
according to the Evolutionist school, is the genesis of instincts. 

Darwin has developed this theory with consummate science and 
ability. He has boldly addressed himself to the most complicated, 
the most wonderful, and the most inexplicable instincts ; those, for 
instance, of the ant and the bee — has striven to show how these 
singular phenomena may have arisen, by selection and heredity, 
out of a few very simple instincts. 

If we take the honey-bee as it now exists, without comparing 
it to any other animal \ if we assume that from the first it con- 
structed cells, as it does now, we are filled with astonishment, but 
cannot explain the fact. But if we recur to the principle of 
gradual transitions, and seek to establish a series of transitional 
steps, ' Nature will perhaps herself reveal to us her method of 
creation.' Let us, then, compare the bee with the melipona and 
the humble-bee. 

The humble-bee exhibits only very rude instincts. It deposits 
its honey in old cocoons, with the occasional addition of short 
tubes of wax. Sometimes also it constructs isolated cells of an 
irregular globose shape. 

Between the perfect cells of the honey-bee and the rude sim- 
plicity of those of the humble-bee stand the cells of the domesticated 
melipona of Mexico, as an intermediate degree. The melipona 



Heredity of Instincts. 29 

itself is, by its structure, intermediate between the honey and the 
humble-bee, though more closely allied to the latter. It constructs a 
comb of wax, almost regular, consisting of cylindrical cells, in which 
the larvae are hatched, and a certain number of large cells to hold 
its store of honey. The latter cells are nearly spherical, and situated 
at a considerable distance from each other. Now, it has been 
calculated that if the melipona were to construct these cells at 
equal distances, and all of one size, if she were to arrange them 
symmetrically in two layers, the result would be a structure as per- 
fect as the hive of the honey-bee. ' Hence we may safely conclude,' 
says Darwin, ' that if we could slightly modify the instincts already 
possessed by the melipona, and in themselves not very wonderful, 
this bee would make a structure as wonderfully perfect as that of 
the hive-bee.' 

Since natural selection acts only by accumulating slight varia- 
tions of organization or of instinct, which may be advantageous 
to the individual, the question arises, How comes it that the succes- 
sive and gradual variations of the constructive instinct, rather than 
of any other instinct, should have by degrees formed the architec- 
tural talent of the honey-bee ? Darwin's answer is — ' The bee must 
consume a great amount of honey in order to secrete a small 
quantity of wax ; and during the winter it lives on its honey. 
Whatever tends to make a saving of wax will also tend to save 
honey, and so will be of service to the future of the hive.' If, now, 
we suppose that the humble-bee hibernates, it will need a great 
quantity of honey ; consequently every modification of instinct, 
which would lead them to construct cells so near each other as to 
have a parti-wall, would save some little wax, and so be of ad- 
vantage to them. Hence it would continually be more and more 
advantageous to the humble-bees if they were to make their cells 
more and more regular, nearer together, and aggregated into a 
mass, like the cells of the melipona. ' So, too, it would be advan- 
tageous to the melipona if she were to make her cells closer 
together, thus approaching the perfect comb of the honey-bee. 
Thus the most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the hive- 
bee, can be explained by natural selection having taken 
advantage of numerous successive slight modifications of simpler 
instincts.' l 

1 Origin of Specks, ch. vii. 



30 Heredity. 



Darwin has endeavoured to explain in the same manner the 
slave-making instincts of certain ants. From P. Huber's famous 
observations, we know that female ants carry oif the larvae of 
the black ants, which become their slaves. Incapable of 
any other work save that of warfare, they are fed, carried about, 
cared for, and even governed by the slave ants. In England, the 
formica sanguined, too, has slaves ; these they employ in the labours 
of the ants' nest, but they also work themselves. This instinct 
may, according to Darwin, be explained as follows. First, these 
ants stole some eggs from a foreign nest for food ; some of the 
eggs were hatched, and the stranger ants did some service to the 
community as workers. Hence the instinct of going and cap- 
turing eggs with a view to having slaves. Then the masters, 
leaving a part of their toil to their slaves, like English ants, came 
finally to renounce labour altogether, like the Swiss ants. 

The theory which refers instincts to hereditary habits has also 
been maintained in France, but only by naturalists who, like 
Darwin, have given special attention to physiological phenomena. 
The only author who, so far as we are aware, has put it forward 
under its psychological form is Mr. Herbert Spencer. He has 
endeavoured to show, not how such instincts — those of the cuckoo, 
the ant, and the beaver, for instance — have arisen, but to discover 
and describe, in a general way, the process of evolution which has 
deduced complex from simple instincts, by heredity and selection. 
Attacking the question of primal origin, which had been avoided 
by Darwin, Spencer has attempted to give the true and complete 
genesis of instincts. All we can do is to indicate the chief points 
of this difficult synthesis. 

In the first place, from the author's special point of view — that 
of the unity of composition of psychological phenomena — instinct 
represents one of the first stages in the ascending evolution of 
mind. In the faculties of instinct, memory, reason, etc., as they 
are generally accepted, Mr. H. Spencer sees only a convenient way 
of grouping and naming phenomena, but no real difference. These 
phenomena form a series, in which there are only insensible tran- 
sitions from class to class. In this ascending series, instinct 
occupies an intermediate place between reflex action and memory ; 
instinct may be regarded as a sort of organized memory, and 
memory as a sort of nascent instinct. 



Heredity of Instincts. 3 1 

Instinct may be defined to be ' composite reflex action.' It 
springs from simple reflex action by successive complications. 
While in simple reflex action a single impression is followed by a 
single contraction ; while in the most highly developed forms of 
reflex action a simple impression is followed by a combination of 
contractions, in those which we distinguish by the name of in- 
stinct a combination of impressions is followed by a combination 
of contractions. This is the case with the fly-catcher, which, 
immediately after it has left the egg, will seize an insect with its 
beak. The question of instinct is therefore reduced to this : How 
can reflex actions, which grow ever more and more complex, spring 
from simple reflex actions ? 

In order to understand how this transition may be effected by 
means of an accumulation of experiences, let us, says Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, take some aquatic animal of a low order, provided with 
rudimentary eyes. This nascent vision being little more than 
anticipatory touch, the animal will be able to note the passage of 
opaque bodies through the water only when they are very near its 
eyes. Consequently, in most cases these bodies will come in con- 
tact with its organism, and will so produce a tactile sensation, 
which will be followed by contractions — the necessary effect of a 
mechanical derangement of the vital force. Hence in this kind 
of animals there constantly occurs this succession, viz., a visual 
impression, and a tactile impression, or contraction. ' But if 
psychical states which follow one another time after time in 
a certain order, become every time more closely connected in 
this order, so as eventually to become inseparable, then it must 
happen that if, in the experience of any species, a visual impres- 
sion, a tactile impression, and a contraction are continually 
repeated in this succession, the several nervous states produced 
will become so consolidated that the first cannot be caused 
without the others following.' 

If we now assume a more perfect vision in the animal, it will 
follow that the same bodies will be visible at a greater distance, 
and that smaller bodies will be visible at a less distance. In such 
a case, there will be no collision, or it will be slight, and only 
produced by the small and nearer object. Neither will there be 
any strong contraction, but a partial tension of the muscles, like 



32 Heredity, 



that of an animal about to seize his prey. There will therefore be 
a visual impression, a tension of the muscles : the latter condition 
allows the animal either to seize a small object, if close to it, to 
retire into its shell, or to escape from an enemy by convulsive 
movements. 

Let us go further, and suppose a further development of the 
animal's eyes, and a habit of moving about in the water. Of all 
the bodies in its vicinity those in front of it commonly make the 
strongest impression on it. These it first sees, and then often 
touches ; and this contact often brings near to its head and its 
tactile organs small bodies which may serve as food. The animal 
will experience the recurring succession of these psychical con- 
ditions : slight excitement of the retinal nerves ; excitement of 
the nerves of the prehensile organs ; excitement of a special set 
of muscles. These conditions must, by repetition in countless 
generations, become so closely combined that the first will of 
necessity call forth the others. 

' Here, then, we see how one of the simpler instincts will, under 
the requisite conditions, be established by accumulated experiences. 
Let it be granted that the more frequently psychical states occur 
in a certain order, the stronger becomes their tendency to cohere 
in that order, until they at last become inseparable ; let it be 
granted that this tendency is, in however slight a degree, inherited, 
so that, if the experiences remain the same each successive gen- 
eration bequeaths a somewhat increased tendency ; and it follows 
that, in cases like the one described, there must eventually result 
an automatic connection of nervous actions, corresponding to the 
external relations perpetually experienced. Similarly, if, from some 
change in the environment of any species, its members are fre- 
quently brought in contact with a relation having terms a little 
more involved ; if the organization of the species is so far devel- 
oped as to be impressible by these terms in close succession ; then 
an inner relation corresponding to this new outer relation will 
gradually be formed, and will in the end become organic. And 
so on in subsequent stages of progress.' 1 

It is, moreover, clear, as the author remarks, that we are not to 



1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, § 194 — 198, Second Edition. 



Heredity of Instincts. 3 * 







see in what has just been said anything more than a probable 
outline of the development of instincts. It will always be impos- 
sible to explain instincts as they are, in their endless varieties and 
complications. The data are inaccessible, and even were they 
accessible, it would be impossible to grasp them in their entirety. 

We need not here pass judgment on this theory of the origin of 
instinct : the matter is beside our purpose, as well as beyond our 
powers. Evidently, this question is connected with the origin of 
species ; and science has not yet solved it, if it ever will be solved. 
Should Darwin's doctrine be confirmed, it must then be admitted 
that all instincts have been acquired, and that what is now fixed 
was at first variable ; that all stability comes from heredity, which 
conserves and accumulates, and that in the formation of instincts 
heredity is supreme. 

However alluring the hypothesis of evolution may appear by its 
simplicity and breadth, it is not without difficulties in the region of 
facts. It explains many of these, but there are others at which it 
stumbles. We need only consider the objection drawn from the 
existence of neuter insects, which, though possessed of a structure 
of their own, and of peculiar instincts, still, being sterile, cannot 
propagate their kind. The formation of the wonderful instinct of 
working ants cannot, on this hypothesis, be explained, for among 
neuters this instinct cannot have been developed by selection and 
heredity. Darwin strives to explain this very ingeniously, while he 
admits that at first the facts appeared to be full of so great difficulty 
as even to overturn his theory. In the present state of science, it 
is not possible to say whether an instinct is the result of hereditary 
habit, or a primitive, natural, and irreducible fact. There is no 
mark whereby we might make a distinction. 

Restricting ourselves within the bounds of the question which 
immediately concerns us, we would remark that the conventional 
saying, that ' instinct is hereditary habit ' is so vague and incom- 
plete as to be inaccurate. Habit is a disposition acquired through 
the continuance of the same acts ; it therefore necessarily pre- 
supposes a primitive act or state, whereof it is a repetition. I 
possess the habit of painting, writing, calculating, only because at 
first I painted, wrote or calculated painfully and slowly, and by a 
special effort of my will. If instinct is a habit, it is a habit of some- 



34 Heredity. 



thing. It presupposes a primitive state anterior to the habitual 
state, and this evidently is one of the lowliest modes of mental 
activity ; it is that minimum of intelligence of which we have 
spoken already — including in intelligence sensibility and volition, 
which are confused together and involved in instinct. Thus, then, 
we are again brought back to our conclusion in regard to the nature 
of instincts. Here is need of caution ; if intelligence does not exist 
in germ, even in the lowliest psychological act, then all the trans- 
formations and evolutions in the world will never put it there ; or 
we shall be the dupes of continual illusion and endless trickery, 
which will make us suppose that we may produce from a thing 
what was never placed in it. If we admit at the outset ever so 
small an amount of intelligence, we may well understand how 
the amount may afterwards have become greater. The seed may 
easily enough become a tree, but without the seed there will be 
no tree. Hence it is strictly necessary to qualify the hereditary 
habit from which instincts spring by calling it a mental habit. 

In a word, according to the hypothesis which regards instincts 
as either fixed, or as varying only within narrow limits, heredity is 
simply conservative. 

In the hypothesis of evolution, heredity is really creative; for 
since, without it, it is impossible for any acquired modification to 
be transmitted, the formation of instincts, properly so called, how- 
ever slightly complex, would be impossible. 

Both hypotheses accord equally well with our solution of the 
nature of instinct. It matters not whether it be the minimum 
of intelligence developed by gradual evolution, or an inferior form 
of intelligence, invariable and for ever fixed and determined by the 
organs. And, from our point of view, it might be said that, since 
the heredity of instincts is established, the heredity of intelligence 
is established partially and in advance. But this we will consider 
more closely in another place. 



Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities. 35 

CHAPTER II. 

HEREDITY OF THE SENSORIAL QUALITIES. 

Perception is a fact of mixed nature, at once physiological and 
mental ; it is begun in the organs, is perfected in the consciousness. 
The soundness of the common opinion which regards our sensa- 
tions as simple, irreducible, ultimate phenomena, by means of which 
we know the material world as it is, is extremely doubtful. Setting 
aside the discussion of this broad question, it is only necessary 
to say that, taking for their basis physical and physiological dis- 
coveries, recent works on psychology — notably those of Bain and 
Herbert Spencer in England, of Helmholtz and Wundt in Ger- 
many, and of Taine in France — have shown that sensations 
supposed to be simple must be dealt with, as chemistry, at its rise, 
dealt with bodies, also supposed to be simple. These psycho- 
logists have shown that neither colours, nor sounds, nor heat, 
probably, indeed, none of the qualities of the external world, at all 
resemble the ideas vulgarly entertained with regard to them ; that 
perception is a state of consciousness that corresponds in us to 
realities external to ourselves, but which does not resemble them : 
so that this totality of attributes which we call the external world, 
and which, by a universal illusion, we think we see as it is in 
reality, is to a great extent the product of our own mind — a creation 
of which the external world furnishes only the raw material, which 
our senses then, after their own fashion, work up and complete. 

Though we cannot have the slightest hesitation in choosing 
between these recent theories and the current opinion in regard to 
the perception of external objects, between that of the Scotch 
school and of the sensus communis — whose least defect is that it 
explains nothing ; yet, so far as the subject of heredity is concerned, 
the question has no interest. » Whether the material world is per- 
ceived immediately as it is, or otherwise than as it is, by a 
synthesis of consciousness, matters not at all. The only problem 
we have to solve is whether the perceptive faculties, the modes of 
sensorial activity, are subject to heredity. 

We will observe, in the first place, that, as regards specific quali- 
ties, the reply admits of no doubt. If we examine the animal 



36 He7'edity. 



scale, from the lowest organisms, possessed of no other sense 
than that of an obtuse, passive touch, up to those most highly 
sensitive, we see at once that each animal derives a certain 
number, and a certain kind of senses from its parents. Heredity 
governs both the quantity and quality of the perceptive faculties, 
so far as those general characters are concerned which we call 
specific. 

Heredity also governs all that concerns race or variety. Thus, 
the dog inherits not only a very acute scent, but also the variety of 
scent which adapts him for hunting a definite kind of game. In 
the negro the acuteness of this same sense characterizes that 
variety of the human species. 

Doubt, therefore, can arise only with regard to individual 
differences, and thus our original question is transformed into this : 
Is the transmission of secondary and individual characters governed 
by the same heredity which governs the transmission of the percep- 
tive faculties, in their essential and fundamental features? The 
answer can only be given by facts ; we shall see that heredity is 
usually the rule, even with what is individual, anomalous, and 
capricious. 

We take, then, in order, the five senses as usually accepted. 
There is now a general agreement to recognize, under the name 
of vital sense, organic sense, or internal sense, a mode of sensa- 
tion, without a special organ, diffused over the entire body, and 
which is, as it were, an internal Touch, whereby we are sensible of 
what takes place within us. But as this sense is entirely personal, 
making us acquainted with our own body, and not with the 
external world, and as it very nearly concerns our pleasures, our 
pains, our instincts, our passions, we will treat of it in another 
place, when discussing the modes by which our feelings act, and 
the heredity of these modes. 

1. — OF TOUCH. 

Touch is the universal, primary sense, possessed by every 
sentient animal. All the other senses are but a modification of 
touch, said one of the ancients. Mr. Herbert Spencer has shown 
how, by evolution and specialization, the other senses — sight, hear- 
ing, smell, taste — could have sprung from touch ; and how touch 



Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities. 37 

is a universal language into which the other senses, which are 
special languages, would at first have to be translated in order to 
be understood. In this fundamental sense, which is at once the 
most essential and the most material, we distinguish tactile sensa- 
tions, properly so-called (hardness, softness, elasticity, etc.), and 
sensations of temperature (heat and cold). Both are governed by 
heredity. 

The extreme difference of tactile sensibility between northern 
and southern races has often been remarked. Among the latter 
it is exquisite and refined ; among the former, obtuse, or, at least, 
imperfect. The Lapp, who takes tobacco oil for colic, has a skin 
as little irritable as his stomach. In Lapland, as Montesquieu 
puts it, ' you must flay a man to make him feel' 

It has been observed, says P. Lucas, that parents transmit to 
their children the most singular perfections and imperfections of 
touch. There are, probably, in the skin no modes of hyper-aesthesia 
or of anaesthesia that could form an exception to this rule. A 
woman whose tactile sensibility was so exalted that for her the 
slightest hurt was an agony, married a man endowed in the highest 
degree with the opposite quality. He did not lack intelligence, 
but his heart and his skin were impassible. A daughter was born 
to them, and she is as insensible to external pain as her father 
himself. We have seen her endure without complaint, and even 
without appearing to notice it, pain which would have been very 
acute for ourselves. 

A family from the South, says the same author, who was 
acquainted with the persons, came to Paris some time ago. 
Several of the children were born in Paris; but those born 
there, as well as those brought there from the South, were in 
childhood extremely sensitive to cold. One of the daughters 
married a man from the North, who is insensible to cold, pro- 
vided it is not excessive. The child born of this union is more 
sensitive to cold than even its mother ; like her, he shivers at the 
slightest fall of temperature, and so soon as the air becomes cold, 
he is afraid of leaving the house. 

One of the most familiar forms of hyper-sesthesia of the touch 
is the sensibility to tickling. There are whole families that are 
insensible to this, while others are so sensible to it that the slightest 
touch will produce syncope. 



38 Heredity, 



Some persons cannot bear the contact or even the near presence 
of certain objects, such as silk or cork. This morbid sensibility- 
is often transmitted by one or other of the parents. ' We are 
acquainted with a family, several members of which, both boys and 
girls, experience instinctively, on touching cork, or the downy skin 
of a peach, such an internal sensation of shuddering repulsion that 
the very sight of the fruit is unendurable to them ; which, therefore, 
must be given them with the skin removed.' 1 

Here we may refer, in passing, to certain hereditary anomalies, 
such as polydactylism, and the warty membrane of Edward 
Lambert (of which we have already spoken), both of which cases 
belong rather to the physiological side of the question. 

The hand, which is pre-eminently the organ of touch, is modified 
by heredity. ' That large hands are inherited by men and women 
whose ancestors led laborious lives ; and that men and women 
whose descent, for many generations, has been from those unused 
to manual labour commonly have small hands, are established 
opinions/ 2 

The same is true of left-handed persons. There are families 
in which the special use of the left hand is hereditary. Girou 
mentions a family in which the father, the children, and most of 
the grandchildren were left-handed. One of the latter betrayed 
its left-handedness from earliest infancy, nor could it be broken 
of the habit, though the left hand was bound and swathed. 

11. — OF SIGHT. 

Sight is the noblest, the most intellectual, of all the senses,- and 
the most important for science and aesthetics. It is a known fact 
that accidental blindness may lead to insanity. Congenital blind- 
ness certainly influences the mind: the imagination of one born 
blind, which possesses only tactile sensations, cannot be anything 
like ours, in which visual sensations predominate. Hence, from a 
purely psychological point of view, the heredity of the sensorial 
modes of vision is worth studying. 

The individual varieties of this sense may be classed under 
three heads, accordingly as they depend on mechanical causes, or 



1 Lucas, i. 481. 2 Spencer, Biology, vol. i. § 82. 



Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities. 39 

on anaesthesia or hyperesthesia of the nervous element. All 
anomalies are transmissible by heredity. 

1. The peculiarities of vision which depend on mechanical 
causes are strabismus, myopia, and presbyopia. The transmission 
of these is very common. In general, it is to hereditary causes 
that we are indebted for the conformation of our visual apparatus, 
and, consequently, for our being far or near-sighted. 

Portal, in his Considerations sur les Maladies de Famille, de- 
scribes an imperfect form of strabismus, called the Montmorency 
sight, with which nearly all the members of that family were 
affected. 

Darwin observed that the Fuegians, when on board his ship, 
could see distant objects far more distinctly than the English 
sailors, notwithstanding their long practice. 1 This is clearly an 
acquired faculty, accumulated and fixed by heredity. 

One of the most striking cases of heredity of vision is the ever 
increasing number of the myopic among persons given to in- 
tellectual work. According to M. Giraud Teulon, continual 
application with the eyes near the object is the great cause of 
myopia. 2 Professor Donders, of Utrecht, while studying the 
statistical reports, was surprised to find that myopia is a disease of 
the wealthy classes, and that the inhabitants of cities are specially 
liable to it, while those of the country are almost exempt. In 
France the Conseils de Revision, have noticed the same fact. In 
England, at the Chelsea Military School, among 1,300 boys only 
three were myopic. In the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 
however, the number of myopic subjects was considerable — at 
Oxford 32 in 127. In Germany the results are even more 
decisive. Dr. Colin, of Breslau, undertook the task of examining, 
in the schools of his own country, the eyes of 10,000 scholars or 
students. Among these he found 1,004 myopic — about ten per 
cent. In village schools they are not numerous — only a quarter 
per cent. In the town schools the number of the myopic increases 
with the grade — primary schools it is 67; middle schools, 10*3; 
normal schools, 197; gymnasia and universities, 26^2 per cent. 

1 Variation, etc., ii. p. 223. 

2 Revue des Cours Scientiftques. 3 Sept. 1870, 



4-0 Heredity. 



This explains why, in Germany, myopia is not a reason for 
rejection by the examining boards. Since constant study creates 
myopia, and heredity most frequently perpetuates it, the number 
of short-sighted persons must necessarily increase in a nation 
devoted to intellectual pursuits. 

2. Anaesthesia of the nerves of sight is transmissible in all its 
grades and in all its forms. It is a well-known fact that the 
sensibility of the eye to light is very different in different persons. 
It may vary as much as 200 per cent, and, of course, will pass 
through all the intermediate degrees. Heredity transmits these 
inequalities, from partial to total anaesthesia, or blindness, when 
the eye, incapable of noting form or colour, has only an indistinct 
perception of light. 

Congenital blindness may run in families. Blind persons will 
sometimes beget blind children. A blind beggar was the father 
of four sons and a daughter, all blind. 1 Dufau, in his work on 
Blindness, cites the cases of 2 1 persons blind from birth, or soon 
after, whose ancestors — father, mother, grandparents, and uncles — 
had some serious affection of the eyes. 

Amaurosis, nyctalopia, and cataract in the parents may become 
blindness in the children ; and such transformations of heredity 
are not rare in animals. 

The incapacity to distinguish colours, known under the name of 
Daltonism, or colour-blindness, is notoriously hereditary. The 
distinguished English chemist Dalton was so affected, as were 
also two of his brothers. Sedgwick discovered that colour-blind- 
ness occurs oftener in men than in women. In eight families akin 
to each other, this affection lasted through five generations, and 
extended to 71 persons. 2 

It is readily understood that such an anomaly of vision is not 
without influence on the mind, at least from the aesthetic point of 
view. An old man, who had from childhood observed that he 
could not call the various colours by their names, was grieved 
because he saw nothing in paintings but what was gray and 
sombre — in a landscape only an obscure haze, in the sunrise and 



1 Lucas, i. 404. 

2 Darwin, Variation, etc., ii. p. 7c. 



Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities. 41 

sunset, in the brightest tints of the rainbow, and in the grandest 
scenes of nature, only a cold and dull sameness. 

3. There are some persons who seem gifted with extraordinary 
— almost supernatural — powers of sight. Some cases of this 
kind are so well attested as scarcely to admit of doubt. Thus, 
sight at great distances and through opaque substances appears, 
in some cases, to be proved beyond the possibility of fraud. If 
there is any explanation of this and other like phenomena, it can 
only be on the supposition of hyper-aesthesia of the optic nerve. 

P. Lucas gives a long account of Hirsch Daenemarck, a Polish 
Jew, who, about the year 1840, travelled over Europe, showing by 
decisive experiments that he could read in a closed book any 
page or line that might be desired. 1 This man's son perceived, at 
about the same age as his father (ten years), that he possessed 
this same faculty, and perhaps in a more remarkable degree. 

It is hardly necessary to observe that heredity always governs 
vision in its specific fonn, and that the only room for doubt 
would be with regard to individual varieties. Thus, all species 
of animals, from the eagle to the owl — from the earth-worm with 
its eye-points, to the spider with its facet-eyes — possess a visual 
apparatus of a structure and optical power peculiar to them, which 
is preserved and transmitted by heredity like all other specific 
characters. 

III. — OF HEARING. 

Though hearing does not possess the same scientific and 
aesthetic importance as sight, yet it is one of our principal senses. 
It is the basis of a science — acoustics — and of an art — music ; 
and, what is still more important, on it depends the possibility of 
articulate language or speech, and, consequently, of deliberate 
thought. If there be no hearing, there is an end of speech ; 
suppress speech, and thought also is suppressed, with all results. 

Hearing, like sight, can have its hyper-aesthesia, its partial and 
total anaesthesia — deafness. As we have seen, there are eyes that 
cannot distinguish certain colours ; in like manner there are ears 
that cannot hear certain sounds. Wollaston met with persons 

1 Lucas, i. pp. 413 — 419. 



42 Heredity. 



who were insensible to all sounds above and below the diatonic 
scale. 

To be congenitally deaf and dumb exerts a well-known and 
unfortunate influence on the development of the intellect, for 
which the only remedy is found in the use of artificial signs. If 
this infirmity is transmissible, heredity may be said to penetrate 
into the very essence of intellect. But this form of heredity has 
been disputed. 

Dr. Meniere, in a special work on this question, while admitting 
that in a certain number of instances the direct and immediate 
heredity of deaf-muteness has been established, says : — c Never- 
theless, these facts must be held to constitute a rare exception ; 
habitually deaf-mutes married to deaf-mutes beget children who 
hear and speak. This is, of course, still more the case where the 
marriage is a mixed one, that is, where only one of the couple is 
deaf and dumb — though even in this case there are well-attested 
cases of heredity/ x Darwin also says : — l When a male or a 
female deaf-mute marries a sound person, their children are most 
rarely affected ; in Ireland, out of 203 children thus produced 
only one was mute. Even when both parents have been deaf- 
mutes, as in the case of forty-one marriages in the United States, 
and of six in Ireland, only two deaf and dumb children were 
produced.' 2 

We would remark that the returns of the Deaf and Dumb 
Institution of London, from its foundation to the present time, are 
conclusive in favour of heredity. Among 148 pupils in that 
institution at one time, there was one in whose family were five 
deaf-mutes ; another in whose family were four. In the families 
of n of the pupils there were three each, and in the families of 19, 
two each. 

It is quite possible that, in the case under consideration, the 
law of heredity is not so much at fault as is commonly supposed. 
The deaf-muteness of ascendants may, in their descendants, be 
transformed into an infirmity of some other description, such 
as hardness of hearing, obtuseness of the mental faculties, or 

1 Recherches sur VOrigine de la Surdi-Mutite, par le Docteur Meniere. 

2 Variation, etc, iv p. 22. 



Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities. 43 

even idiocy. Of this the distinguished anatomist Menckel gives 
many instances. But we will consider hereafter this obscure point 
of the metamorphoses or transformations of heredity. 

It has seemed to us more natural to discuss the heredity of the 
musical faculty under the head of imagination. As will be seen, 
there is perhaps no other artistic talent that presents more con- 
clusive instances of hereditary transmission (the three Mozarts, the 
two Beethovens, the more than 120 members of the Bach family). 
Still, however important the part we assign to the influence of the 
imagination and of the intellectual faculties, it must be admitted 
that there can be no musical talent without a certain disposition of 
the organs of hearing. Here education does next to nothing, for 
it is nature that gives 'a good ear.' Hence the incontestable 
heredity of the aptness for music necessarily implies the heredity of 
certain qualities of hearing. This conclusion applies to performers 
as well as to composers. 

IV. OF SMELL AND TASTE. 

It is hardly possible to separate here these two senses, which are 
so closely allied that smell may be called taste acting at a 
distance. 

Man, no doubt, ranks below other animals as regards fineness of 
the sense of smell. Nowhere among the human family, even 
among the negroes, can be found a sense of smell as acute as that 
of dogs, of carnivorous animals in general, and of certain insects. 
Gratiolet, in his Anatomie Comparee du Systeme Nerveux, states 
that an old piece of wolf-skin, with the hair all worn away, when 
set before a little dog, threw the animal into convulsions of fear by 
the slight scent attaching to it. The dog had never seen a wolf; 
and we can only explain this alarm by the hereditary transmission 
of certain sentiments, coupled with a certain perception of the 
sense of smell. 

It is notorious that, to a great extent, the value of the canine 
race depends on their native, and therefore hereditary, subtlety of 
scent 

If in animals so highly endowed in this respect we could 
note individual differences, we should probably see them trans- 



44 Heredity. 



mitted by heredity. But, unfortunately, we can study them only 
under the specific form. There, however, there is no room for 
doubt, for heredity transmits them all without exception. 

In the human species, savage races have a characteristic 
acuteness of smell which allies them to animals. In North 
America the Indians can follow ^ their enemies or their game by 
the scent, and in the Antilles the maroon negroes distinguish 
by the scent a white man's trail from a negro's. 1 The whole 
negro race has this sense developed to an extraordinary degree. 
Whether this results from a great development of the olfactive 
membrane, or from the more frequent exercise of this sense, in any 
case, this innate or acquired faculty is preserved by heredity. 

The specific and individual varieties of taste are transmissible, 
like those of smell. Hybridism gives curious examples of this 
among animals. ' The swine/ says Burdach, ' has a very strong 
liking for barley; the wild boar will not touch it, feeding on 
herbage and leaves. From a cross between a domestic sow and a 
wild boar come young some of which have an aversion for barley, 
like the wild boar, while the others have a taste for it, like the 
common hog.' 

In man, anaesthesia of taste, and antipathy for certain flavours, 
are hereditary. Schook, the author of a treatise entitled De 
Aversione Casei belonged to a family to nearly all the members of 
which the smell of cheese was unendurable, and some of whom 
were thrown into convulsions by it. 2 Such antipathy is very often 
hereditary. ' In a family of our acquaintance, the father and 
mother like cheese ; the grandmother had an extreme dislike for it. 
Four of the children share in the same dislike.' 3 

An exclusive liking for vegetable food and repugnance to flesh 
is of very rare occurrence, but it is transmissible. ' A soldier of 
the Engineers, who derived from his father an invincible repug- 
nance to all food composed of animal substances, was unable, 
during the 18 months he spent with his regiment, to overcome 
this aversion, and was obliged to quit the service.' 4 

Finally, P. Lucas, following Zimmermann and Gall, gives the 
i 

1 Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicates. Art. * Odorat. ' 2 Ibid. 

3 Lucas, i. 389. 4 Gazette des Tribunaux, 21 Mai, 1844. 



Heredity of the Sensoi'ial Qualities. 45 

following surprising case. A Scotchman had'an irresistible longing 
for human flesh, which led him to commit several murders. He 
had a daughter, who, though taken from her parents, who were 
burned at the stake, before she was a year old, and though she was 
brought up among respectable people, still succumbed, like her 
father, to the inconceivable desire for eating human flesh. 1 

There exists in some families a sort of natural hydrophobia. 
' Three members of a family with which we are acquainted — the 
grandmother, the mother, and a daughter — eat their food without 
taking any liquid \ they do not drink at all, we might say. Their 
repugnance to liquids is so great that they refuse to drink until 
they fall into a feverish state.' 3 

We have collected sufficient facts enough to show that there is 
such a thing as heredity of the perceptive faculties, even under the 
individual form. Thus, if we take an animal, as it is naturally con- 
stituted, with its sensorial organs, through which it comes in contact 
with the outer world, we may say that the quantity and quality of 
its perceptive faculties will be certainly transmitted in their specific 
form, and very probably too in their individual form ; therefore, 
heredity is the rule. 

Sensation, however, presents only the raw material of cognition, 
which the mind's own activity has to transform and elaborate. To 
the external element supplied by the material world must be added 
the internal element supplied by ourselves, in order to produce 
what is properly called cognition, and the development of the 
mind. Hence \t might be said that the heredity of the perceptive 
faculties, as here considered, is in some manner external, and that 
our having established it is a physiological rather than a psycho- 
logical result. In our opinion, however, this is not the case, nor 
would that objection be made if it were borne in mind that per- 

1 We state this case with great reserve, because its authenticity does not 
appear to be beyond question. It is not, however, more improbable than 
other cases of heredity. It is notorious that the inclination to cannibalism is 
extremely lasting. A New Zealander of great intelligence, half-civilized 
by a protracted sojourn in England, while admitting that it was wrong to eat 
a fellow-man, still longed for the time to come when he could have that 
pleasure. Lucas, i. p. 391. 

2 Lucas, ibid. 388. 



4 6 Heredity. 



ception is an act essentially active, into which the whole mind 
enters. But we need not dwell upon a point which would require 
a lengthy explanation, carrying us beyond the limits of our subject. 
We shall presently see whether the heredity of the intellectual 
faculties, in their highest forms, can be directly established. 



CHAPTER III. 

HEREDITY OF THE MEMORY. 



If, in treating of Memory, we confine ourselves to a description 
of the phenomena, and the investigation of their organic conditions, 
our task is simple. Nothing is easier than to attribute recollection 
to a special faculty which knows the past as consciousness knows 
the present. Unfortunately, however, this supposed faculty adds 
nothing to our knowledge, and with it we are in possession of only 
what the phenomena gave us, with just a word over. On the other 
hand, when we go beyond mere description and verbal explana- 
tions, the problem of memory, simple as it appears, becomes very 
difficult. Yet since, in order to understand the relation between 
heredity and memory, it is necessary to have some precise notions 
about this subject, the problem must be attempted. 

The phenomena of memory, considered in their ultima ratio, are 
explained by the law of the indestructibility of force, of the conser- 
vation of energy, which is one of the most important laws of the 
universe. Nothing is lost ; nothing that exists can ever cease 
to be. In physics, this is admitted readily enough • the principle 
is well-established, and confirmed by so many facts, that doubt 
is impossible. In morals, the case is different : we are commonly so 
accustomed to regard all occurrences as the results of chance, and 
as subject to no laws, that many at least implicitly admit the annihila- 
tion of that which once was a state of consciousness to be possible. 
Yet annihilation is as inadmissible in the moral as it is in the 
physical world ; and but little reflection is needed to see that in 
all orders of phenomena it is alike impossible for something to 
become nothing, or for nothing to become something. Such a 



Heredity of the Memory. 47 



miracle is neither conceived by reason nor justified by experience. 
We may, indeed, state such a proposition verbally ; but so soon as 
we pass from words to things, from vagueness to precision, from 
the imaginary to the real, we cannot form an idea of any such 
annihilation in external or internal experience. 

Nor are the considerations in favour of the indestructibility of 
our perceptions and ideas merely of a theoretical nature; there 
are also facts which, however strange they may appear at first, 
are very simple, if we bear in mind that in the mental world, as 
elsewhere, nothing perishes. Works on medicine and psychology 
cite numerous instances where languages apparently altogether 
forgotten, or memories apparently effaced, are suddenly brought 
back to consciousness by a nervous disorder, by fever, opium, 
hasheesh, or simply by intoxication. Coleridge tells a story of a 
servant-maid, who, in a fever, spoke Greek, Hebrew, and Latin • 
Erasmus mentions an Italian who spoke German, though he had 
forgotten that language for twenty years ; there is also a case 
recorded of a butcher's boy who, when insane, recited passages 
from the Phedre which he had heard only once. All these facts 
are so well known that they need only here be cited \ they, with 
many others, prove that in the depths of the soul there exists many 
a memory which seemed to have vanished for ever. 

The physiological study of perception further shows that the pro- 
duction of the phenomena of consciousness is subject to the law 
of the transformation of force. Though this point is yet beset 
with difficulties, the works of Mateucci and of Dubois-Reymond 
show that electric currents are produced in the nerves, and are 
there in continual circulation. When sensation takes place, and in 
general whenever a nerve is active, there is produced a diminution 
of its special current, as is indicated by the needle of a galvano- 
meter connected with the nerve. This diminution takes place 
because a molecular change is produced within the nerve, which, 
on reaching the muscles, produces a contraction, and on reaching 
the brain produces a sensation • — in other words, sensation is work, 
and to perform work a certain force has to be expended and trans- 
formed. The electrical forces which serve to produce the sensation 
could not, at the same time, either give motion to a magnetic 
needle or produce chemical decomposition, because, while per- 



48 Heredity. 



forming work within they cannot, at the same time, perform work 
without; and 'as the nerve cannot produce electricity without 
using up something, the ultimate source of the forces which the 
nerve transforms into electricity is the materials furnished by 
the blood. The nerve is nourished with these materials, as the 
pile is fed with zinc and acid.' * Thus perception — that is to say, 
the primary phenomena of consciousness — comes under the general 
law. It is impossible that it should come of nothing. We daily 
experience thousands of perceptions, but none of these, however 
vague and insignificant, can perish utterly. After thirty years some 
effort — some chance occurrence, some malady — may bring them 
back ; it may even be without recognition. Every experience we 
have had lies dormant within us : the human soul is like a deep 
and sombre lake, of which light reveals only the surface ; beneath, 
there lives a whole world of animals and plants, which a storm or 
an earthquake may suddenly bring to light before the astonished 
consciousness. 

Both theory and fact, then, agree in showing that in the moral, 
no less than in the physical world, nothing is lost. An impression 
made on the nervous system occasions a permanent change in the 
cerebral structure, and produces a like effect in the mind — whatever 
may be understood by that term. A nervous impression is no 
momentary phenomenon that appears and disappears, but rather a 
fact which leaves behind it a lasting result — something added to 
previous experience and attaching to it ever afterwards. Not, how- 
ever, that the perception exists continually in the consciousness ; 
but it does continue to exist in the mind, in such a manner that it 
may be recalled to the consciousness. 

It is not easy to say what it is that survives our perceptions and 
ideas. The least objectionable name for it is residuum, a term 
which does not imply any theory, because it only indicates an 
unquestionable fact of our mental life. It is not to be supposed 
that these residua are always present to the mind, so that the 
attention can at any moment be voluntarily directed to them. 
But it may be assumed that every mental act leaves in our physical 
and mental structure a tendency to reproduce itself, and that when- 

1 Wundt, Menschen- und Thierseele, 5th and 6th Lectures. 



Heredity of the Memory. 49 

ever this reproduction occurs the tendency is thereby strengthened ; 
so that a tendency often reproduced becomes almost automatic. 
We might go somewhat further, and say that the relation subsisting 
between the actual perception and the residuum is the relation 
between the conscious and the unconscious. In the perception or 
the idea the consciousness perishes ; or, more accurately, there 
takes place a transformation, of which we can have no precise idea, 
but which must be very analogous to the transformations of the 
physical world (heat into motion, motion in light, etc.). Between 
these two worlds of consciousness and unconsciousness, there 
must exist such a correlation that to each mode of the one a mode 
of the other corresponds. Mental life is a constant transformation, 
the unconscious becoming conscious, and vice versa ; but this 
transformation does not take place by chance : though the laws are 
unknown, it is not without laws. If we could say which form of 
the unconscious corresponds to each form of consciousness, we 
could say what relation subsists between a perception or an idea 
and its residuum. 

This we cannot do. Herbart, and after him Muller, the 
physiologist, supposed they made some advance in the explana- 
tion of the phenomena by comparing ideas to forces which have 
their statics and dynamics. But, in the first place, it may be 
remarked that consciousness is one, and that therefore it can 
at each instant hold only one idea. Its form is that of a simple 
series; and though certain states of consciousness seem to be 
simultaneous, they are, in fact, successive. It we try to think 
simultaneously cf a lion and a mountain, a cube and a sphere, 
it will be seen that one idea excludes the other, and that we can 
think of them only successively or alternately. From this it 
follows : — 

That an idea which occupies the consciousness can be displaced 
only by a stronger idea. If the two mental forces which contend 
for the occupation of the consciousness are alike, and act in one 
direction, the result is a very intense state of consciousness. If the 
two forces are equal and contrary, they will be in equilibrium. 
If they are unequal and contrary, the one will over-master the 
other, but in doing so loses a part of its own force equivalent 
to that which it displaces. This is proved by the fact that an 



50 Heredity. 



idea is perceived all the more vividly in proportion as the 
mind is less occupied at the same moment with anything else. 
When a person is deeply occupied, a new idea makes little im- 
pression on his mind, because before it can lay hold of the con- 
sciousness it has expended all its force. On the other hand, it is 
well known that persons who are altogether idle interest them- 
selves much about trifling details, and that an empty mind breeds 
hypochondria. 

An idea that has passed away from the consciousness is not 
destroyed, but only transformed. Instead of being a present idea, 
it becomes a residuum, representing a certain tendency of the mind 
exactly proportioned to the energy of the original idea. The 
existence of ideas in the unconscious state might, therefore, be 
regarded as a state of perfect equilibrium. i Forgetfulness means 
that the idea of a thing is in equilibrium with other ideas, and 
recollection that this idea quits the state of equilibrium, and enters 
the state of motion. No idea is lost • and every operation of the 
mind in virtue of which a latent idea passes to the active state 
is a state of recollection.' 1 

Amid all these hypotheses, which the future, perhaps, will show 
to be truths, this remains certain and unquestionable,- — that the 
phenomena of recollection are to be referred to the grand law of 
the conservation of force, of which it is only a particular case. If, 
now, we pass from this very general law to one that is less general — 
from a formula embracing all changes which occur in the universe 
to a formula restricted to the domain of life — we shall see memory 
under another aspect. 

This biological law is habit. In the first place, habit, considered 
in its essence, is referable to the law of the conservation of force, 
for its cause is the primordial law or form of being — that is, the 
tendency of beings to persevere in the act which constitutes them. 
As has been already seen, every act leaves in our physical and 
mental constitution a tendency to reproduce itself, and when- 
ever this reproduction occurs the tendency is strengthened ; and 
thus a tendency, often repeated, becomes automatic. This 
automatism is the link between memory and habit, and gave rise 



1 Miiller, Psychologies ii. p. 517. 



Heredity of the Memory. 51 



to the saying that memory is only a form of habit — a proposition 
which, with some restrictions, is true. 

On the one hand, it is certain that the association of ideas (a 
current expression, but inexact, for association occurs also between 
perceptions, sentiments, motions, etc.) is the indispensable condi- 
tion of memory. On the other hand, habit consists of automatic 
associations : an act does not become a habit until the various 
terms of the series which compose it are perfectly fused and 
integrated, so that one necessitates the others (as drilling, 
dancing, playing the piano). Not to inquire here whether associa- 
tion is to be referred to habit, or habit to association, it is clear that 
he who does not see the fundamental identity of these two modes" 
of activity, and consequently of habit and memory, must be totally 
without the faculty of generalization. 

But to confound them absolutely appears to us incorrect, for 
the following reasons. Habit is altogether unconscious and 
automatic ; memory is so only in part. We do not attribute to 
memory those psychic states which are so well organized, and so 
incorporated in us, as to constitute a part of ourselves. We do 
not say we remember that an effect has a cause, that a body 
possesses extension, that a self-moving body is an animal. It 
would, therefore, be more exact to say that memory is an incipient 
habit. If we trace the evolution of mind — going from instinct, 
which is automatic, to reason, which is so no longer — we may say 
that memory is the transition from perfect to imperfect automatism. 
If we trace it in the reverse direction, then memory indicates the 
moment when what was free and conscious tends to become 
unconscious. ' Memory, then, appertains to that class of psychical 
states which are in process of being organized. It continues so 
long as the organizing of them continues, and disappears when 
the organization of them is complete. In the advance of the 
correspondence, each more complex cluster of attributes and 
relations which a creature acquires the power of recognizing is 
responded to, at first irregularly and uncertainly; and there is 
then a weak remembrance. By multiplication of experiences this 
remembrance is made stronger — the internal cohesions are better 
adjusted to the external persistences ; and the response is rendered 
more appropriate. By further multiplication of experiences, the 



5 2 Heredity. 



internal relations are at last structurally registered in harmony 
with the external ones; and so conscious memory passes into 
unconscious or organic memory. 



y 1 



II. 



The foregoing remarks are all within our subject, though they 
may not seem so ; for, having now referred memory to habit, we 
will endeavour, in the conclusion of the work, to refer heredity 
also to habit, and to show that both are but one form of the 
universal mechanism — of that inflexible necessity which rules the 
world of life and even of thought, and of which memory itself is 
but one aspect. Without forestalling this conclusion, of which the 
value can only be appreciated when we have first studied the facts, 
the laws, and the causes, heredity may at least be compared with 
memory. Heredity, indeed, is a specific memory : it is to the 
species what memory is to the individual. Facts will hereafter 
show that this is no metaphor, but a positive truth. If these con- 
siderations seem too theoretical, it must be at least admitted that, 
memory being as closely and perhaps even more closely connected 
with the organism than any other faculty, the heredity of memory 
is implied in physiological heredity. Some recent authors, among 
them Dr. Maudsley, attribute a memory to every nerve-cell, to 
every organic element of the body. ' The permanent effects of 
a particular virus, such as that of variola or of syphilis, in the 
constitution, show that the organic element remembers, for the 
remainder of its life, certain modifications it has received. The 
manner in which a cicatrix in a child's finger grows with the 
growth of the body proves, as has been shown by Paget, that the 
organic element of the part does not forget the impression it has 
received. What has been said about the different nervous centres 
of the body demonstrates the existence of a memory in the nerve- 
cells diffused through the heart and the intestines ; in those of the 
spinal cord ; in the cells of the motor ganglia, and in the cells of 
the cortical substance of the cerebral hemispheres/ 2 

Still, when we search history or medical treatises for facts to 



1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 2nd Edition, § 202. 

2 Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, ch. ix. 



Heredity of the Memory. 53 

establish the heredity of the memory in its individual form, we 
meet with little success. While such facts are numerous in refer- 
ence to the imagination, the intellect, the passions, we find very 
few in favour of heredity of memory. 

There is a mental disorder, however — idiocy — which presents 
some instances. This infirmity — an hereditary one, as we shall 
see, at least in the shape of atavism — presents, among other 
characteristics, an excessive weakness of memory. 'Idiots generally 
recollect only what concerns their tastes, their propensities, their 
passions. But, as this is doubtless the result of the feebleness of 
their sensorial impressions, this heredity is the effect of a more 
general hereditary transmission. 

Aphasia, which is nearly always connected with paralysis of the 
right side, is produced by lesion of the anterior lobes of the brain 
(the third frontal convolution of the left side, according to Broca). 
Its psychological cause appears to be amnesia, or a loss of 
memory, an inability to find words in general, or some particular 
words. Although this disease has been studied with much care, 
no cases of heredity are cited. 

History shows the same scarcity of instances. The almost 
fabulous powers of memory that are recorded (Mithradates, 
Hadrian, Clement VI., Pico de la Mirandola, Scaliger, Mezzofanti, 
etc.) seem isolated cases ; at least, we cannot trace them up or 
down in the genealogical line. Yet some facts may be noted. The 
two Senecas were famed for their memory : the father, Marcus 
Annaeus, could repeat 2000 words in the order in which he heard 
them ; the son, Lucius Annaeus, was also, though less highly, gifted 
in this respect. According to Galton, in the family of Richard 
Porson, one of the Englishmen most distinguished as a Greek 
scholar, this faculty was so extraordinary as to become proverbial 
— the Porson memory. The case may also be noticed of Lady 
Hester Stanhope, the daughter of one of the most illustrious English 
families, who, under the name of ' the Sibyl of the Libanus,' led 
so strange and adventurous a life. Among many points of re- 
semblance between herself and her grandfather she herself cites 
memory. ' I possess my grandfather's eyes, and his memory of 
places. If he saw a stone on the road he remembered it — it is 
the same with me ; his eye, which usually was dull and lustreless, 



54 Heredity. 



lighted up, like mine, with a wild gleam under the influence of 
passion.' 

It may be remarked that certain determinate forms of memory 
are hereditary in artist-families. It will be seen that the talents 
for painting and for music are very often transmitted. Now and 
then they persist through four or five consecutive generations ; and 
it is evident that no one can be a good painter without possessing 
a memory for forms and colours, or be a good musical composer 
without memory of sounds. 

To sum up, it must be admitted that there are not many facts to 
show the heredity of memory ; but the conclusion is not thereby 
justified that this form of heredity is rarer than others. The 
opposite opinion is still tenable, and the lack of evidences can be 
explained. 

Memory, with all its undoubted usefulness, plays in human life, 
and consequently in history, only a secondary and obscure part. 
It produces no works, like the intellect and the imagination ; nor 
does it perform any brilliant actions, like the will. It does not 
give material evidence of itself, like a defect of the senses. It does 
not come under the ken of the law, like the passions ; nor does it 
enter the domain of medicine, like mental disease. Since, then, it 
is so little tangible, the lack of evidences need not surprise us ; and 
there is still reason to hope that, in proportion as the subject of 
mental heredity, hitherto much overlooked, is better studied, atten- 
tion will be directed to this matter, and will abundantly show that 
here, as elsewhere, heredity is the rule. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HEREDITY OF THE IMAGINATION. 



All psychologists distinguish two kinds of imagination : one 
reproductive, the other creative. Both of these are alike subject 
to the law of heredity ; perhaps, indeed, apart from instinct and 
perception, there is no faculty of which the transmission is so 
common. This is not surprising, if we remember the close relation 



Heredity of the Imagination. 55 

between perception and imagination ; that the latter, in its passive 
form, depends entirely on the nervous system and the organs, and 
in its active form is closely connected with them ; and that, conse- 
quently, psychological heredity implies mental heredity. 

Passive imagination is the property by which our sensorial im- 
pressions tend to reproduce themselves, though in less vivid shape, 
in the absence of their object. In its highest degree it becomes 
hallucination, which makes our internal states objective, and 
presents them to us as external realities; and this gives ground 
for believing that passive imagination is, in its mechanism, a 
reversed perception — perception proceeding from without inwards, 
imagination from within outwards. The part played by imagin- 
ation in insanity, sleep, drunkenness, hallucination, ecstasy, and 
various states called miraculous, has been profoundly studied in 
our time, in works on mental diseases. In these works are many 
important facts in the study of heredity. We propose to discuss 
these hereafter, and bring under one head all the phenomena of 
morbid heredity. 

At present we deal only with active imagination — the imagin- 
ation of the poet, the artist, and even of the man of science ; the 
imagination which creates and interprets an ideal conception "fyy 
means of sensible forms. It is a complex faculty, presupposing, 
at least, taste and sentiment; yet, at bottom, it differs less than 
might be supposed from passive imagination ; nor is common 
parlance at fault when it confounds the two under one name. 
The essential characteristic of both is vivid representation, intense 
vision. 1 Hence it is that great artists have ever come so near to 
hallucination and madness, and hence many of them have over- 
stepped the limits of sanity. 

The history of art shows that creative imagination is transmissible 
by heredity. We often find families of poets, musicians, painters. 
Families of poets are, it would seem, more rare ; nor is the reason 
hard to find. No one can be a musician without an exquisite 

1 At the close of a conversation about family affairs, Balzac said to Jules 
Sandeau, ' Now let us come to reality ' — meaning his novels. G. Flaubert, 
while describing the poisoning of one of his heroines, felt, as he himself says, 
all the symptoms of poisoning — the taste of arsenic, indigestion, and vomiting. 
— Taine, V Intelligence, i. p. 94. 



56 Heredity. 



sensibility of ear, nor a painter without an innate gift for colour 
and form, which presupposes a certain conformation of the visual 
organ. These physiological conditions are not to the same degree 
necessary for the poetic faculty. Hence we may say that musical 
or plastic talent is more dependent than the poetic on the con- 
formation of the organs. In the former case, psychological 
heredity is more closely connected with physiological heredity, 
and this makes its transmission more certain ; for, as will be shown, 
heredity is a form of necessity (in other words, of mechanism) ; and 
this is far more inflexible in the domain of life than in that of 
thought. 

In the following list, and in all others of the same kind, it is, 
of course, not intended to give a complete enumeration of every 
case of heredity. We merely wish to place facts before the 
reader's eyes ; we cite only well-known names, or thoroughly con- 
clusive cases, judging that here, as in every experimental study, 
the important thing is not the quantity of experiences, but their 
quality. Although, too, much is to be allowed for education and 
tradition, in considering a talent hereditary in a family, we must 
not attempt to explain, by these external means, what we attribute 
to heredity. The creative imagination is probably, of all the 
faculties, the one that it is least possible to produce artificially. 
Perhaps the following summaries of historical facts will be found to 
Embrace enough experiinenta lucifera to justify the assertion that 
heredity is the rule, not the exception. 

11. — POETS. 

Poets are scarcely slandered, if it be said that as a rule they 
form a passionate, ardent, sensitive race ; that is the very condition 
of the artistic temperament. Hence the disorders, extravagancies, 
and singularities of their lives. These conditions are not favour- 
able to the foundation of a family. A great artist is only so by a 
mixture of qualities, which are, so to speak, extra-natural. This is 
a character which is produced only by a happy accident, and 
therefore its heredity must be very unstable. 

And yet, in examining the families of the fifty-one poets named 
below, there will be found twenty-two who have had one or more 
distinguished relatives. Their names are given in capitals. 



Heredity of the Imagination. 5 7 



LIST OF POETS. 

Alfieri, Anacreon, Ariosto, Aristophanes, Burns, Byron, 
Calderon, Camoens, Chaucer, Chenier, Coleridge, Corneille, 
Cowper, Dante, Dryden, ^Eschylus, Euripides, Goethe, 
Goldoni, Gray, Heine, Horace, Hugo, Juvenal, La Fontaine, 
Lamartine, Lucan, Lucretius, Metastasio, Milton, Musset, 
Moliere, Moore, Ovid, Petrarch, Plautus, Pope, Racine, Sappho, 
Schiller, Shakspere, Shelley, Sophocles, Southey, Spencer, Tasso, 
Terence, Tennyson, Lope de Vega, Virgil, Wordsworth. 

It will be observed that in this list, from which no poet of 
eminence is intentionally omitted, some might have been excepted 
whose genealogies are quite unknown — Sappho, Terence, and 
others, who left no family. In this way we reach the conclusion 
that upwards of twenty out of fifty poets (or forty per cent.) had 
illustrious relatives. We give some details on this point : — 

Ariosto, while yet a child, wrote comedies. In his family we find — 
His brother Gabriel, a poet of some distinction, who, after 

Lodovico's death, finished the comedy of La Scholastica; 
His nephew Horace, Tasso's intimate friend, author of the 
Argument^ and other works. 
Aristophanes. The talent of this famous comic poet is found in 
a minor degree in 
His son Araros, author of five comedies, among which we may 

name the ' Kokalos ' and the ' Ailosikon; ' 
Another son, Nicostratos, who wrote fifteen comedies ; 
Perhaps also another son, Philippos. 
Burns appears to have inherited from his mother that excessive 

sensibility which made him one of the first poets of Britain. 
Byron. His genealogy is interesting. 

His mother was an eccentric, haughty, passionate woman, and 
half insane. Hence a certain English author has said that 
' if ever there was a case wherein hereditary influences could 
be pleaded as an excuse for eccentricity of character and 
conduct, that case was Byron's.' He was descended of a 
line of ancestors in whom, on both sides, was to be found 
everything that could destroy the harmony of character, as 
well as all peace and individual happiness. 



58 Heredity. 



His daughter Ada, Lady Lovelace, was distinguished for her 

mathematical abilities. 
His grandfather, Admiral Byron, author of Travels. 
His father, Captain Byron, a man of dissolute habits. 
Chaucer, the father of English poetry. 

His son, Sir Thomas, speaker of the House of Commons, 
ambassador to the Court of France. 
Ch^nier, Andre, the most illustrious of his family ; 
His brother, Marie-Joseph. 

Both took after their mother, Santi Lomaka, a Greek by descent, 
and a woman of distinguished talent. 
Coleridge — poet and metaphysician. The following abridged 
list of his descendants is taken from Galton : — 
His son Hartley, poet, a precocious child, whose early life was 
characterized by visions. His imagination was singularly 
vivid, and of a morbid character. 
His son, the Rev. Derwent, author, late Principal of the Chelsea 

Training College, the only survivor of the poet's children. 
His daughter Sara possessed all her father's individual character- 
istics, and was also an author. Married her cousin, and 
of this union was born Herbert Coleridge, a philologist. 
Corneille, Pierre, with whom may be placed 
His brother Thomas ; 

His nephew Fontenelle, his sister's son. From this sister 
descended, in direct line, the celebrated Charlotte Corday. 
^Eschylus numbered among his family 

His brother Kynegiros, one of the heroes of Marathon ; 
His brother Aminyas, who commenced the battle of Salamis. 
His son Euphorion, and his nephew Philocles, seem to have 
possessed some talent as tragic poets. Philocles was victor 
in the contest at which Sophocles brought out his CEdipus 
Tyrannus. 
Goethe inherited his father's physical constitution, but his 
mother's character. As poet and physiological student, he 
thus notes these hereditary influences : — - 
Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, 
Des Lebens ernstes Fiihren ; 
Von Mtitterchen die Frohnnatur, 
Und Lust zu fabuliren. 



Heredity of the Imagination. 59 

Urahnherr war der Schonsten hold, 

Das spukt so hin und wieder ; 
Urahn frau liebte Smuck und Gold 
Das zuckt wohl durch die Glieder. 
Heine, Heinrich. 

With him may be mentioned his uncle, Solomon Heine, the 
celebrated German philanthropist. 
Hugo, Victor. Without noticing what he may have derived from 
his father or mother, may be named 
His two sons, Charles- Victor and Francois- Victor ; 
His two brothers, both known as literary men, Eugene (died 
1837), and Abel (died 1855). 
Lucan. His genealogy is given under the name of Seneca, his 

uncle. 
Milton. 

His father was a man of great musical talent, whose songs are 

still known \ 
His brother, a judge, also took part in political life. 
Musset, Alfred de. His talent is to some extent reproduced in 

His brother Paul, novelist. 
Racine. 

His son Louis, a ' good verse-maker.' 
Schiller, like Burns, seems to have derived his extreme sensitive- 
ness from his mother, who was a very extraordinary woman. 
Sophocles. Part of his tragic genius lived in 
h His son Iophon, of whom Aristophanes had a high opinion ; 
His grandson, Sophocles the younger, twelve times crowned. 
Tasso, Torquato, who wrote his first poem, Rinaldo, at the age 
of seventeen, received his talent from 
His father, Bernardo, a poet of merit, author of the Amadis, 

and from 
His mother, Parzia di Rossi, a remarkable woman. 
Vega, Lope de, after a long life of adventure, died a priest. By 
Marcela he had 
A natural son, who, at fourteen, had already gained some dis- 
tinction as a poet. As fond of adventure as his father, he 
died young in battle. 
Wordsworth, poet and metaphysician; 
His brother, an ecclesiastical writer ; 



6o Heredity. 



His three nephews, all distinguished scholars ; one of them was 
senior classic at Cambridge in 1830. 

III. PAINTERS. 

A glance at any history of painting, or a visit to a few museums, 
will show that families of painters are not rare. In England you 
have the Landseers ; in France the Bonheurs. Every one has 
heard of the Bellinis, Caraccios, Te'niers, Van Ostades, Mieris, 
Van der Veldes. In a list of forty-two painters — Italian, Spanish, 
and Flemish — held to be of the highest rank, Galton found 
twenty-one that had illustrious relatives. 

LIST OF PAINTERS. 

Bassano, Bellini, Buonarotti (Michael Angelo), Cagliari (Paul 
Veronese), Caracci, Ludovico,andAnnibale; Cimabue, Correggio, 
Domenichino, Francia, Gelee (Claude Lorrain), Giorgione, Giotto, 
Guido Reni, Parmegiano, Perugino, Sebastian del Piombo, 
Poussin, Robusti (Tintoretto), Salvator Rosa, Rafael, Titian, 
Leonardo da Vinci. 

Murillo, Ribeira, Spagnoletto, Velasquez, Gerard Douw, A. 
Durer, the two Van Eycks, Holbein, Mieris, Van Ostade, 
Potter, Rembrandt, Rubens, Ruysdael, Teniers, Van 
Dyck, Van der Velde. 

Bassano, Giacomo da Ponte (15 10 — 1592), the greatest of his 
family ; 
His father, Francisco, founder of the school 'which bore his 

name; 
His four sons, Francisco, Giovanni, Leandro, Girolamo, all 
distinguished painters. Francesco, who was of a melancholy 
temperament, committed suicide at the age of 49. 
Bellini, Giovanni, Venetian, was one of the first who painted 
in oils ; 
His father, Jacopo, a celebrated portrait-painter. 
His brother, Gentile, one of the favourites of the Venetian 
senate. 
Cagliari (Paul Veronese) : 

His father, Gabriele, was a sculptor; 

His maternal uncle, Antonio, was one of the earliest among the 
Venetian painters who abandoned the Gothic style ; 



Heredity of the Imagination. 61 

His son, Carletto, a painter of great promise, died at the age 

of 26; 
Another son, Gabriele, attempted painting, but without success. 
Caracci (Ludovico), founder of a school which bears his family 
name; 
His three cousins-german, Agostino, Annibale, and Francisco. 
Agostino was remarkable as an artist, man of science and 
poet ; 
His nephew, Antonio, was also a distinguished painter, but died 

young ; 
Also his father, Pietro, a painter of no originality. 
Claude Lorrain (Gelee) never married. 
His brother, was an engraver on wood. 
Corregio, Allegri, died young, leaving 

An only son, Pomponeo, who painted fresco in his father's style. 
Eyck, Jan van, and Hubert, two brothers whose names are 
inseparable ; 
Their father was an obscure painter; 
Their sister, Margaret, followed painting with zeal. 
Mieris, Francois, called the old ; 

His two sons, John and William, the latter scarcely inferior to 

his father \ 
His grandson, Francois, called the younger, son of William. 
Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, was pupil of 

His uncle, Juan of Castille, a painter of great merit. We may 
also name his uncle, Augustino del Castillo, and his cousin, 
Antonio del Castillo y Salvedra, both painters of merit. 
Ostade, Adrian van, whose name is almost inseparable from that 

of his brother^ Isaac, who died very young. 
Parmegiano (Mazzuoli), a great colourist ' into whom ' according 
to Vasari ' Raffaelle's soul passed \ ' 
His father Filippo, and his two uncles, Michael and Pietro, 
painters of some note. 
Potter, Paul, the most celebrated animal-painter of the Dutch 
School ; 
His father, Peter, a landscape-painter. 
Rafael Sanzio. 

His father, Giovanni Sanzio. 



62 



Heredity. 



Robusti (Tintoretto), one of the most celebrated painters of the 
Venetian school ; 
His daughter, Marietta, famous as a portrait-painter ; 
His son, Domenico, a good portrait-painter. 
Ruysdael, Jakob, and his brother, Salomon, both landscape- 
painters. 
Teniers, David, called the younger, the most celebrated of 

his family ; 
His father, David the elder ; 
His brother, Abraham. 
Titian (Vecellio). In his family were nine painters of merit, 
among them his brother, Francesco, and his sons, Pomponio 
and Horatio. The following is his genealogy from Galton. 



x 



x 



Francesco 



Titian 



Mario j\ 



Pomponio 



Horatio 



Tizianello Tomaso 



Fabricio Cesare 



Van Dyck, Antony. His father was a painter, his mother 

worked landscapes on tapestry with wonderful skill. 
Van der Velde, William (the younger), a master of marine land- 
scape ; 
His fatter, Van der Velde the elder, and 
His son, William, both marine painters • 

Probably the two brothers, Isaiah and Jan van der Velde, born 
at Leyden, and Adrian, a native of Amsterdam, were of this 
family. 



Heredity of the Imagination. 63 

IV. — MUSICIANS. 

The development of the art of music is far more recent than 
that of painting. It dates back no more than three centuries. 
Still we shall find that the heredity of this art is not rare : the 
family of the Bachs alone presents us with most singular evidence. 
Of great musicians who constitute exceptions to the law of heredity 
I find only Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, and Halevy. 
Allegri, the famous composer of the Sistine Chapel Miserere, 

was of the same family as Correggio the painter. 
Amati, Andrea, the most illustrious member of a family of violinists 
at Cremona ; 
His brother, Niccola, his two sons, Antonio and Girolamo, and 
his grandson. 
Bach, Sebastian, the greatest of his family. 

The Bach family is, perhaps, the most distinguished instance of 
mental heredity on record. It began in 1550, and continued 
through eight generations, the last known member being 
Regina Susanna, who was living in indigence in the year 1800. 
' During a period of nearly 200 years this family produced a 
multitude of artists of the first rank. There is no other 
instance of such remarkable talents being combined in a 
single family. Its head was Weit Bach, a baker of Presburg, 
who used to seek relaxation from labour in music and song. 
He had two sons, who commenced that unbroken line of 
musicians of the same name that for nearly two centuries 
overran Thuringia, Saxony, and Franconia. They were all 
organists, church singers, or what is called in Germany Stadt- 
Musiker. When they had become too numerous to live near 
each other, and the members of the family were scattered 
abroad, they resolved to meet once a year, on a stated day, 
with a view to keep up a sort of patriarchal bond of union. 
This custom was kept up until nearly the middle of the 18th 
century, and often more than 100 persons bearing the name 
of Bach — men, women, and children — assembled.' In this 
family are reckoned twenty-nine eminent musicians. Fetis, 
in his Dictionnaire Biographique, mentions fifty-seven mem- 
bers of this family. 
Beethoven, Ludwig ; 



64 He7'edity. 



His father, Johannes, was tenor in the choir of the Elector of 

Cologne ; 
His grandfather, Ludwig, was first singer, and then Kapell- 
meister in the same choir. 
Bellini, son and grandson of musicians of no great mark. 
Bend a, Francisco (1709 — 1786), the principal member of a 
remarkable family of violinists ; 
His three brothers, Giovanni, Giuseppe, and Georgio ; 
His two sons, Federico and Carolo, and two daughters ; 
His two nephews, Ernest, son of Giuseppe, and Federico, son 
of Georgio. 
Bononcini. His father, Antonio, and his son, Giovanni ; the latter 

was for some time in England, and the rival of Handel. 
Donizetti, Gaetano ; 

His brother, Giuseppe, specially cultivated military music. 
Dussek, Ladislas, a noted composer and performer ; 
His brother, Johannes, an organist of repute ; 
His brother, Franz, a good violinist \ 
His daughter, Olivia, inherited her father's talent. 
Eichhorn and his two sons, who from their earliest years showed 

great talent as instrumentalists. 
Gabrielli, Andrea, and his nephew Giovanni. 
Halevy. Of Jewish origin — a point worthy of note, to which 
reference will again be made ; 
His brother, Leon, literary man and poet. 
Haydn and his brother, who was a good organist and composer 

of church service. 
Hillier, Johann Adam — musical composition and works on 
music ; 
His son, Friedrich Adam (1768 — 1812) ; 

His grandson, Ferdinand, ' now one of the best composers in 
Germany ' in the opinion of Fetis. 
Keiser, Reinhard, his father and his daughter. 
Mendelssohn, of a Jewish family; 

His grandfather, Moses, philosopher, wrote works on aesthetics • 
His uncle, an author ; 

His sister, a distinguished -woman, a clever pianist — she had a 
share in much of the work done by her brother. 



Heredity of the Intellect. 65 



Meyerbeer (Jakob Baer) ; 

His two brothers, the one, Wilhelm, an astronomer, noted for his 
lunar chart, the other, Michael, a poet, who died young. 
Mozart. 

His father, Johann Georg, second Kapellmeister to the Prince- 
Bishop of Salzburg ; 
His sister, whose success while yet a child seemed to give 

evidence of talent not realized in maturer years ; 
His son, Carl, was an amateur musician ; 

His son, Wolfgang, born four months after his father's death, 
gave evidence early in life of a happy turn for music. 
Palestrina. His sons, Angelo, Rodolfo, and Sylla, who all died 
young, seemed to have inherited some of their father's talent, 
if we may judge by some cf their compositions which have 
been preserved. 
Rossini. Y^ father and mother musicians at fairs. 



CHAPTER V. 

HEREDITY OF THE INTELLECT. 
I. 

The faculty of knowing may be hypothetically divided into two 
parts : the one includes perception, memory, and imagination, of 
which we have now studied the heredity ; there will remain for 
the other a certain number of faculties which have for their object 
abstract and general conceptions, which we will here call intellect 
proper. We have now to consider if these last-named modes of 
knowing, which are the highest of all, are subject to the law of 
heredity. 

First, it is evident that these manifestations of thought are 
indeed the higher forms of the human intellect — that is to say, of 
the highest intellect of which we are cognizant. Man can rise 
from the concrete and confused sensation to the simplicity of 
abstract notions ; he can reduce a countless mass of facts to one 
general idea, and denote it by an arbitrary sign ; he can, by ratiocin- 
ation, arrive at the most remote, or the most complicated conse- 

F 



66 Heredity. 



quences, and divine the future from the past. It is because man 
can compare, judge, abstract, generalize, deduct, and form induc- 
tions, that sciences, religion, art, morals, social and political life, 
have sprung into being, and have continued their incessant evolu- 
tion. So wonderful are these faculties, that, by their accumulated 
results, they have made of man, as it were, a being apart from all 
the rest of nature. 

The inquiry, therefore, whether these faculties can be hereditary, 
is an inquiry whether psychological life, in its highest form, is 
subject to this law of biology. If we take a narrow and superficial 
point of view, it might appear as if, so far, we had at most proved 
the heredity of the lower forms of intelligence, and as if we had 
merely touched the outer margin of the subject; and it might be 
said that we have no right to argue from the less to the greater, 
from the lower to the higher. Now, however, we meet the diffi- 
culty face to face. 

It cannot, however, be said that the controversy with regard to 
this point has been very keen. It could only have been maintained 
by metaphysicians who have for the most part shown the utmost 
indifference for this subject. The partisans of experience, physio- 
logists and others, who have treated of heredity, have generally 
attributed to it the greatest degree of influence. Some, carried 
away by misdirected zeal, and more concerned about the hypo- 
thetical consequences of such a doctrine than about its intrinsic 
truth, have imagined a division of the intellectual faculties, and 
have withdrawn one portion of it from heredity. According to 
this theory, which claims the authority of Aristotle, we have two 
souls, the one sensitive or animal, transmissible like the body, and 
the other rational or human, i not dependent on the act of 
generation/ and which would, therefore, lie wholly beyond the 
influence of heredity. This hypothesis, now wholly obsolete, needs 
no discussion. They who maintain it, and Lordat in particular, 
have shown so clearly that their preconceived opinion would not 
submit to facts, that criticism is quite superfluous. 

The problem for us is this : Are the higher, like the lower, 
modes of intellect transmissible ? Are our faculties of abstraction, 
judgment, ratiocination, invention, governed by heredity, as are 
our perceptive faculties ? Or, in plainer terms, and in common 



Heredity of the Intellect. 6/ 

parlance, — Are common sense, insanity, genius, talent, subtlety, 
aptitude for abstract studies, hereditary? 

In order to reply, we will examine the question from the 
two-fold standpoint of theory and fact, of metaphysics and 
experience. Reason will show that the heredity of intellect is 
possible, experience that it is real. 

If we admit the heredity of the lower modes of intellect — and 
facts are here decisive — logic alone ought to convince us that it 
extends, to all intellect, for it is admitted by all schools of thought 
that this faculty is essentially one. Psychology has always dis- 
tinguished different modes of the faculty of knowing, and, indeed, 
the analytical study of intellect is only possible on that condition. 
But these are but differences in the way of looking at them, not 
specific differences. In the same way, phrenologists have thought 
that they could assign to each faculty a special portion of the brain ; 
but, even had their view been sustained, such localization would in 
no degree have invalidated the unity of the intellect itself. How- 
ever far back the question may be carried, every inquiry into the 
ultimate nature of intellect must necessarily issue in one or other 
of these two conclusions : either it is an effect, of which the cause is 
the organism ; or it is a cause, of which the effect is all that exists 
or can be known. The first hypothesis is called materialism, the 
second idealism. We shall see, taking our stand on reasoning 
only, that between these two hypotheses and the heredity of the 
higher modes of intellect there exists no contradiction, no logical 
incompatibility. 

There is no difficulty in the materialistic hypothesis ; for if it be 
admitted that thought is only a property of living matter, then, as 
heredity is one of the laws of life, it must therefore be also one of 
the laws of thought Or, in more precise terms, intellect is a 
function whose organ is the brain • the brain is transmissible, as 
is every other organ, the stomach, the lungs, and the heart; the 
function is transmissible with the organ; therefore intellect is 
transmissible with the brain. Physiological heredity involves, as 
a necessary consequence, psychological heredity in all its forms. 

On the other hand, the idealistic hypothesis seems to stand in 
utter opposition to heredity of intellect ; but, as will be seen, this 
opposition is not so radical as would at first appear. 



68 Heredity. 



Idealism has recently found learned and able advocates; its 
details will hereafter be noticed. Enough here to explain, in a 
few words, that idealism is that metaphysical system which holds 
thought to be the only reality. Sometimes, regarding thought or 
intellect as a secondary and derivative mode of existence, it strives 
to ascend still higher, and to discover in will the first cause of all 
things, the supreme reality. Such is the position of Schopenhauer 
and his school, that is to say, the most philosophic form of con- 
temporary idealism. Thus exalted, and under this exceedingly 
abstract form, idealism is as far removed as it well can be from 
experience, in the common acceptation of that term. To ex- 
perience, however, it must come. This system, like all others, must 
account for the world of sense, for nature, and her phenomena and 
laws. There being no other absolute existence save thought, 
matter must be referred to thought. Matter, according to Schel- 
ling, can be nothing else but ' extinct or exteriorized mind/ Hegel 
defines it to be idea made objective to itself. It matters little 
what these theories are worth. Idealism has never explained the 
transition from the absolute to the relative, from mind to matter, 
except by metaphors, — a process, moreover, which it has in common 
with every other metaphysical system. It is enough that it admits 
the material world, with its laws, as a purely phenomenal existence. 
In this admission we find the basis for a reconciliation between 
idealism and heredity. 

For if we hold, with Schopenhauer, that the will is the primitive 
element in everything and in every being, then intellect will be 
only a derived faculty, a first step toward materialization. Hence 
it will be subject to the mechanism of logic, emprisoned in the 
' forms of thought/ in the categories discovered and analyzed by 
Kant, and, like all the rest of nature, it will have its laws. This 
admission is enough. Henceforth, between the idealists and 
ourselves there exists no real opposition. Their theory is that there 
are two distinct modes of existence : the noumenon in the will «d 
the phenomenon in the intellect and in nature. To the mind, 
regarded as noumenon, none of our conceptions of laws, logical 
necessity, or categories are applicable; for all this only pertains to 
the mind considered as phenomenon. Consequently, since we 
restrict ourselves to the study of experience — that is to say, of 



Heredity of the Intellect. 69 

facts and their laws — there can be 'no disagreement between us 
and the idealists. The difference between us springs, not from 
any diametrical opposition of doctrine, but from the fact that to 
the study of phenomena which both sides pursue, and to which 
we strictly confine ourselves, the idealist joins a metaphysical 
theory, which, in our eyes, has no scientific value, since it 
transcends science. 

It is true that idealists hold that the laws of nature, and, gener- 
ally, of internal or external experience, have only a relative 
phenomenal value ; but we have never asserted that experience 
can give us the absolute. If the idealist admits, as he does, that 
in the order of physical, chemical, physiological, and psychological 
facts there are coexistences and sequences that can be reduced to 
fixed formulas, he has no fair grounds for refusing to concede to 
heredity a place among these empiric laws, though he may deny 
that it applies to the intellect considered as noumenon. 

Thus the heredity of intellectual faculties can be reconciled 
with the most transcendental idealism. If, now, we examine the 
question in our own way, that is, without transcending experience, 
we say that intellect, in its inmost nature, appears to us as one of 
the manifestations of the unknowable. We may, indeed, as 
psychology and the sciences advance, determine its empiric laws 
and conditions more precisely \ but we shall not arrive at its essen- 
tial nature. It is indisputable that within the last thirty years 
English and German psychologists — and particularly Herbert 
Spencer, Bain, and Wundt — have, with a precision previously 
unknown, analyzed the modes of intellect and the conditions of its 
development. They have shown that all intellectual processes, 
from the highest and most complex down to the most elementary, 
consist in apprehending resemblances and differences. To assimi- 
late and dissimilate, to integrate and disintegrate, to combine 
and differentiate — such is the fundamental process of the intellect, 
and it is found in all its operations, as well in the simplest as in 
the most complex. Yet this analysis, while it discloses to us in a 
striking way the ' unity of composition' of psychic processes, in 
reality only enables us to understand the mechanism of intellect 
and the laws of its empiric development. We may, indeed, reduce 
the infinite variety of the facts of thought to two simple facts, viz. 



yo Heredity. 



combination and differentiation ; but it still remains true that these 
two facts themselves exist only in and by thought, and we do not 
know what thought is. If we add that these phenomena are given 
us under the form of a sequence, or of simple series, and that suc- 
cession is the essential condition of consciousness, we do but 
express the form of thought, not its nature, for things may be 
successive without being facts of consciousness. Thought, there- 
fore, is still impenetrable to us : it explains all things, but does not 
explain itself; it is one of those noumena wherewith we solve the 
enigma of the universe, but it is itself an enigma. 

The unity of the intellect is an indisputable fact, established alike 
by consciousness, experience, and theory. Nothing, therefore, could 
be more chimerical that to suppose that given intellectual opera- 
tions are, by their own nature, beyond the laws of heredity. Logic 
rejects any such conclusion, and it is no less contradicted by facts. 

It will, perhaps, excite surprise that, in the foregoing remarks, we 
have not named that highest mode of intellect which metaphysi- 
cians call reason. This faculty — whose object, according to some, 
is the absolute, the infinite, the perfect, according to others, the 
necessary process of thought — is pre-eminently the metaphysical 
faculty. It has its seat in that region of the impalpable and the 
invisible where we look for the ultimate reasons of things. It lies 
so far above experience that, in a study on experimental psychology, 
we are almost obliged not to speak of it. We need only declare 
our position with regard to every possible theory of reason. 

Metaphysicians are by no means agreed as to the nature of 
this faculty. In France, a theory, borrowed from Leibnitz, 
broadened and deepened by idealists in our own day, reduces 
reason to two constituent principles, viz. the principle of contra- 
diction or of identity, and the principle of raison suffisante — both 
ultimately reducible to one. The principle of identity, the last 
resort of logic and science, is subordinate to the principle of 
raison suffisante, which is the ultimate principle of all existences, 
because the latter accounts for all things, is not limited to the 
declaration that a thing is, but why it is, and what determined its 
existence ; and this ultimate principle itself would not be explic- 
able were it not that it implies the summum intelligibile, which is 
identical with the good. All things, therefore, would be reduced 



Heredity of the Intellect. 71 

to a moral principle. Logic, metaphysics, and morals are so 
thoroughly blended together, that the endless variety of human 
knowledge and of human actions would have but one origin, and, 
however unlike they may be to one another in their phenomenal 
multiplicity, they would be identical in their rational unity. 

This coherent theory is, by its own nature, placed out of the 
reach of all experience and all verification. Attractive as it may 
be, it has the radical defect of all metaphysics, that we cannot 
say whether it has any objective, absolute value, or whether it is 
merely subjective. This, however, is clear, that between this 
theory and ours no opposition is possible, since each occupies a 
province of its own, and the world of pure reason begins only 
where the world of phenomena ends. 

If from this strictly metaphysical theory of reason we descend 
to the usual doctrine, the joint product of the Scotch school and 
of French eclecticism, it will be found perfectly reconcilable with 
the heredity of intellect, even in its highest form. The one 
fixed and essential point in the vague, loose, and often contradictory 
system of Reid and Cousin is this, that reason is ' an impersonal, 
universal, and necessary ' faculty. But it would hardly be possible 
to name any characters more in accordance with the law of heredity. 
Without stopping to inquire how the infallible transmission of these 
characters is explained — a question never so much as raised by the 
eclectic school — whether it is connected with some permanent state 
of the brain, or whether it results from some mysterious operation, 
it is enough that it is admitted that they are the same, everywhere, 
always, and in all men. Hence they are specific characteristics; 
that is to say, it is as much a contradiction in terms to think of a 
man without reason as of a vertebrate animal without a cerebro- 
spinal axis. But, as we shall see later, the special property of 
heredity is precisely this, — that it transmits, without exception, all 
specific characteristics. Thus, if we accept Cousin's theory, there 
is no faculty of man that is more certainly transmissible than the 
highest form of intellect — reason. For heredity, too, is impersonal, 
since it preserves the species ; and universal, since it governs the 
whole domain of life ; and it is one of the forms of inflexible 
necessity. 

Thus, then, either we place intellect and reason, its highest 



7 2 Heredity, 



form, beyond time and space, and then they have nothing in 
common with experience; or we consider them in their pheno- 
menal manifestations, and then there is no logical ground for 
exempting them from the law of heredity. 

ii. 

It must now be shown from facts that this transmission is not 
only possible, but actual. Here is a difficulty. Intellect — that is 
to say, the faculty of comparing, judging, reasoning— is found 
everywhere — in science, politics, art, industrial inventions, learning, 
history, etc. Is it, therefore, necessary to class under the head of 
intellect every case of heredity in politics, literature, and art ? We 
must have recourse to an artificial process, and divide what in 
nature is united. Surrendering, therefore, to imagination all that 
concerns artists, and to active faculties all that has to do with 
politics, we here treat only of cases in which pure intellect — that is 
to say, reflection, taste, or criticism — predominates. 

Still these cases are sufficiently numerous to make two catego- 
ries. In the first we place men of science, philosophers, poli- 
tical economists, etc. ; in the second, writers, properly so called, 
historians, critics, and novelists. This division is, of course, some- 
what arbitrary, nor should any great stress be laid on it ; but it 
will enable us to introduce more order into our arrangement. 

MEN OF SCIENCE. 

Families eminent in science are not rare. Many scientific men 
take after their fathers. The atmosphere of free inquiry in which 
they were brought up has not been without influence on their 
vocation. Still, education does not constitute genius ; and in order 
to have a turn for scientific investigation, something more is 
required than the external transmission resulting from education. 
It has also been observed that the mothers or grandmothers of 
several men of science were remarkable women, as in the case of 
Buffon, Bacon, Condorcet, Cuvier, d'Alembert, Forbes, Watt, 
Jussieu, etc. 1 Heredity among philosophers is somewhat rare. 

1 Galton, who notes this fact, assigns for it a reason which to us seems very 
questionable. Women, says he, are blinder partisans and more servile fol- 
lowers of custom than men ; and it is a great blessing for a child to have a mother 



Heredity of the Intellect. 73 

This will appear less surprising when we bear in mind that few 
philosophers have left any posterity. Thus, in modern times, Des- 
cartes, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Kant, Spinoza, Hume, A. Comte, 
Schopenhauer, etc., either never married or had no children. 

The exceptions, real or apparent, to the laws of heredity are : 
Bacon (Roger), Berkeley, Berzelius, Blumenbach, Brewster, Comte, 
Copernicus, Descartes, Galen, Galvani, Hegel, Hume, Kant, 
Kepler, Locke, Malebranche, Priestley, Reaumur, Rurnford, 
Spinoza, Young, etc. 

Ampere, Andre-Marie, mathematician, physicist, and philosopher ; 

His son, Jean-Jacques, traveller, literary man, historian. 
Arago, Francois ; 
His three brothers, Jean, Jacques, and Etienne, authors and 

artists ; 
His son, Emmanuel, lawyer, politician. 
Aristotle. Though ancient genealogies are difficult to make 
out, we may name 
His father, Nicomachos, physician to Amyntas II., and author 

of medical works ; 
His son, Nicomachos, held by some to be the author of the 

Ethics which bear his name ; 
His nephew, Callisthenes, son of Hero, a cousin of Aristotle. 
Bacon, Francis ; 

His father, Nicholas, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal \ 
His mother, Ann Cooke, belonged to a highly-gifted family. She 
was a distinguished scholar, and was very well versed in 
Latin and Greek ; 
His brothers were distinguished men • among them, Nathaniel, 
a brother by another mother, who was a clever painter. 
Bentham, Jeremy, logist and moralist ; 

His brother, General Samuel Bentham, a distinguished officer ; 
His nephew, George, an eminent botanist, president of the 
Linnaean Society. 
Bernouilli, Jacques, of Swiss origin, was the first to establish the 
reputation of this family, which is famous for the number of 

that approves its free inquiry into truth. We will come back to this point 
when treating of the Laws of Heredity. 



74 Heredity. 



mathematicians, physicists, and naturalists it has produced. 
The following is a list of this family. Each of the members 
mentioned was distinguished in some branch of science. 



Jacques Jean 

Nicolas, Daniel, Jean Nicolas 



Jean Jacques 

In our own century there yet remained in Switzerland descend- 
ants of this family: Christophe Bernoulli (1782 — 1863), Pro- 
fessor of Natural Science in the University of Bale ; Jerome 
Bernouilli (1745 — 1829), chemist and mineralogist. 
Boyle, Robert. In his family we count no less than seventeen 
notable members, most of whom gained distinction in political 
life. 
Brodie, Benjamin, one of the most celebrated surgeons in Eng- 
land. His family reckons six distinguished members. 
Buckland, William, geologist ; 

His son, Frank, naturalist, well-known for his popular writings. 
Buffon. His views on heredity will be hereafter stated. He used 
to say that he derived all his mental qualities from his mother ; 
His son, a man of good endowments, guillotined as an ' aristo- 
crat.' 
Cassini, Jean-Dominique, a celebrated astronomer, the first 
remarkable member of a family which might be compared 
with that of the Bernouillis ; 
His son, Jacques Cassini, astronomer ; 

His grandson, Cesare-Frangois Cassini de Thury, became a mem- 
ber of the Academie des Sciences at the age of twenty-two ; 
His great-grandson, Jacques-Dominique, Director of the Observ- 
atory at Paris, completed the topographical chart of France ; 
His great-great-grandson, Henri-Gabriel (1 781-183 2), naturalist 
and philologist, died of cholera. 
Condorcet, mathematician and philosopher, seems to have 
derived much of his mental qualities from his mother ; 
His uncle, a bishop, was a relative of the Cardinal de Bernis. 



Heredity of the Intellect. 75 

Cuvier, Georges, naturalist ; 

His mother, an accomplished woman, took great pains with his 

education ; 
His brother, Frederic, naturalist. Researches on Instinct. 
D'Alembert, was a natural son of Destouches, inspector of 
artillery, and of Mdlle. de Tencin ; 
His mother was noted for her wit, and belonged to a family 
that counted among its members the Cardinal de Tencin, 
Pont de Veyle, a dramatic author, and d'Argental, the corres- 
pondent of VoLtaire. 
Darwin, Erasmus, author of Zoonomia ; 

His two sons, Charles and Robert, physicians of note, of whom 

Charles died very young ; 
Iflis grandson, Charles, the celebrated author of the Origin of 

Species ; 
In this family we mention only those most worthy of note. 
Davy, Humphrey, chemist, and his brother John, physiologist. 
De Candolle, Augustin-Pyrame, and his son, Alphonse, both 

celebrated botanists. 
Euler, Leonhard. His father was a mathematician; 

His three sons, Johann, Carl, and Christoph, astronomers, 
physicists, and mathematicians. 
Franklin, Benjamin. 

Two great-grandsons, authors of works on the natural sciences, 
on chemistry and on medicine. 
Galileo-Galilei ; 

His father, Vicenzo, wrote a theory of music ; 
His son, Vicenzo, was the first to apply to timepieces his father's 
discoveries as to the pendulum. 
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne ; 

His brother, an officer highly esteemed by Napoleon, died of 

fatigue after the battle of Austerlitz ; 
His son, Isidore, a naturalist. 
Gmelin, Johan Friedrich. The father, two imcles, a cousin, and a 
son of this famous German chemist, were known by their works 
on botany, medicine, and chemistry. 
Gregory, James. The most distinguished of a family of mathe- 
maticians and physicists, which reckons no less than fifteen 



y6 Heredity, 



remarkable members, among them his son and his two grand- 
sons. Thomas Reid was the son of one of his nieces. 
Haller, Albrecht, regarded as the founder of modern physiology ; 
His father, learned in the law ; 
His son, a literary man and historian. 
Hartley, David, philosopher and physician ; 

His son, a member of Parliament, a correspondent of Franklin, 
and one of the plenipotentiaries at the Peace of Paris. 
Herschel, Sir William ; 

His father and brother are specially noted as musicians — musical 

talent was hereditary in the family; 
His sister, Caroline, aided him in his astronomical labours, and 

received a gold medal from the Royal Society ; 
His son John, one of the greatest astronomers of this century ; 
Two grandsons, also astronomers. 
Hooker, William, and his son, Joseph D., botanists. 
Humboldt, Alexander, and his brother William. 
Hunter, John, the famous English anatomist ; 

His brother William, and his nephew Matthew, were also dis- 
tinguished anatomists. 
Huyghens, a Dutch astronomer; 

His father, a mathematician and statesman ; 
His brother -was engaged in public life, and followed William III. 
to England. 
Jussieu, Bernard de, may be regarded as the most eminent of a 
family of botanists, whose genealogy is as follows : — 



V Antoine Bernard Joseph 

I 

Laurent 

Adrien 

Leibnitz. His grandfather and his father professors of jurispru- 
dence at Leipzig. 

LiNNiEUS. The talent of this great botanist is found, though in a 
lower degree, in his son Charles. 

Mill, John Stuart. 

His father, James, was well-known for his works on psychology 
and political economy. 



Heredity of the Intellect, jj 

Newton, like many men of genius, stands alone. Galton, however, 
thinks Charles Hutton, the mathematician, and James Hutton, 
the geologist, were his remote descendants. 
CErsted, Danish physicist ; 

His brother and his nephew were statesmen ; 
His son, a naturalist and traveller. 
Plato left no children \ 

His nephew, Speusippos, was head of the Platonic school after 
the master's death. 
Pliny (the Elder), naturalist ; 

His nephew, Pliny the Younger. 
Saussure, Swiss geologist and physicist ; 

His father, author of works on agriculture and statistics ; 
His son, a naturalist. 
Say, Jean-Baptiste, his son, Horace, and his grandson, Leon, a 

family of political economists. 
Stephenson, George, and his son Robert, both celebrated en- 
gineers. 
Watt, James. His mother, Agnes Muirhead, was a superior 
woman ; 
His grandfather was a humble professor of mathematics ; 
His father was baillie of Glasgow for twenty years ; 
One of his sons, who died at the age of twenty-seven, gave great 
promise as a geologist, and was the friend of Sir Humphrey 
Davy. 

AUTHORS AND MEN OF LETTERS. 

Addison, one of the best prose writers of England, minister in the 
reign of George I. ; 
His father, a very learned divine and author. 
Arnold, Thomas, Head-Master of Rugby School, one of the 
reformers of public instruction in England ; 
His son, Matthew, poet and critic. 
Boileau, Nicolas, falls rather under this category than under that 
of imagination ; 
His two brothers, Jacques, Doctor of the Sorbonne, and Gilles, 
both authors. 
Bossuet. We may, perhaps, class with him 

His nephew, Bishop of Troyes, who edited his uncle's works. 



78 Heredity. 



Bronte, Charlotte, published, under the name 'Currer Bell/ 
Jane Eyre at the age of twenty-two. Her sisters, under the 
names Ellis and Acton Bell, published remarkable novels. 
Casaubon, Isaac, and his son Meric, scholars and philologists. 
Champollion, J. -Francois, the earliest interpreter of hieroglyphics ; 

His son, Jean-Jacques, historian and archaeologist. 
Etienne, a family of literary men and scholars, whose principal 
members were — Robert, who printed the Bible ; 
His brother Charles, scholar and man of science ; 
His son Henri, author of the Greek Lexicon ; 
Another son, Robert. 
Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai. 

His nephew, ambassador in Holland, author of diplomatic 
memoirs. Also two great-nephews were remarkable men. 
Grammont, De, author of the famous Memoires ; 

His father, Philibert, a courtier of much wit, and an author; 
His grand-uncle, Richelieu (vide Richelieu). 
Grotius, founder of international law ■ 
His grandfather, a scholar; 
His father, curator of the University of Leyden ; 
His uncle, Cornelius, professor of philosophy and jurisprudence ; 
His son, Petrus, diplomatist and scholar. 
Hallam. 

His father, Dean of Bristol, and his mother are both spoken of 

by the biographers as remarkable persons ; 
His son Arthur, who died at twenty-three ; the subject of Tenny- 
son's In M'ernoriarn ; 
His other son, Henry, died at twenty-six ; was a young man of 
great promise. 
Helvetius, author and philosopher \ 

His father and grandfather were distinguished physicians, and 
inspectors general of the hospitals of Paris. 
Lamb, Charles, whose name is always inseparable from that of his 

sister Mary. 
Lessing, Gottlieb Ephraim, had two brothers, Karl and Johann, 

both distinguished- as men of letters. 
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 

His grandfather, minister of Inverary, was an eloquent preacher; 
His father, a brilliant writer and zealous abolitionist ; 



Heredity of the Intellect. 79 

Two uncles, one of them a general, long governed a portion of 
the Madras Presidency ; the other was tutor to the Princess 
Caroline of Brunswick. 
Niebuhr, the Roman historian ; 

'His father, traveller and author. 
Palgrave, Sir Francis, author of erudite works on Anglo-Saxon 
history. Two sons, one a scholar, the other a traveller and 
orientalist. 
Porson. A family of classical scholars. We have already mentioned 

the ' Porson memory/ 
Roscoe, well-known by his historical studies on the period of the 
Renaissance, had 
Three sons, political writers and poets. 
Le Sage, novelist. With him may be named 

Two sons, dramatists and actors. 
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, first made his mark as a scholar at the age 
of forty-seven ; 
His son Joseph, a scholar, like his father. 
Schlegel, Wilhelm, and his brother, Friedrich; 

Their father was a well-known preacher, who also wrote some 

poems ; 
Two uncles, one dramatic poet and critic, the other historian to 
the King of Denmark. 
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. 

His father, Marcus, a rhetorician, had a prodigious memory; 
His brother, Gallio, Proconsul of Achaia, considered as one 01 

the most accomplished Romans of his day \ 
His nephew, Marcus Annaeus Lucan, the poet. 
Sevigne, the Marquise de ; 

Her son was, as her letters show, a man, though dissipated, of 

considerable wit ; 
Her cousin, Bussy-Rubutin, was of similar character. 
Stael, Madame de. 

Her grandfather, Charles Fre'de'ric Necker, was professor of law 

at Geneva, and wrote on that subject; 
Her father, minister of Louis XVI., and an author; 
Her uncle, Louis Necker, professor of mathematics at Geneva ; 
The son and grandson of the latter, Jacques and Louis Necker, 
professors of natural science at Geneva. 



8o Heredity. 



Swift. The poet Dryden was his grand-uncle. 
Trollope, Mrs., the novelist; 

Two sons, Anthony and Thomas, novelists. 

The list might easily have been extended, but the names here 
given are probably sufficient for our purpose. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HEREDITY OF THE SENTIMENTS AND THE PASSIONS. 

I. 

Man is situated in the midst of the universe, which acts upon 
him only by its properties. Colours, odours, savours, forms, 
resistances, movements, become modes of our organism, producing 
therein a shock to the nerves. Then all these peripheric im- 
pressions pass to the brain, probably into the optic thalami ; and, 
being thence transmitted to the cortical substance of the brain, 
they are transformed, we know not how, into facts of consciousness : 
the physiological phenomenon becomes psychological, consti- 
tuting that state of the mind which we denominate cognition. 
But this is not all. The nerve-vibrations produced by material 
objects not only make us acquainted with something outside of us, 
but they also produce within us a certain agreeable or disagreeable 
state, which we call feeling. If there were no such reverberation 
of pleasure or pain within us, then our experiences of the external 
world would be, as Bichat says, ' only a frigid series of intellectual 
phenomena.' 

Those phenomena of sensation of which the subjective cha- 
racter is opposed to the objective character of the phenomena of 
cognition may have an ideal as well as a real cause. Experience 
shows that pure concepts — simple ideas — may not only be acts of 
consciousness, but may also produce in us agreeable or painful 
conditions. Thus, whoever conceives the ideal of a future state of 
society, with a larger measure of justice, morality, science, and 
happiness, simultaneously with his perception of this fair vision 
is pleasurably affected by the sight of what might be, painfully by 
the sight of what is. 

If we add that pleasure and pain may be excited in us either 



Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions, 8 1 

by some state of our organs dependent on the vital processes, or 
by recollections suggested by memory, we have enumerated every 
mode of cognition which can produce phenomena of sensation. 
Causes — real and ideal — present and past — all these elements are 
added to each other, placed in juxtaposition and fusion, and 
neutralize each other, so as to produce these complex sensations, 
which make their appearance very slowly, both in the individual 
and in the species. Thus, the sentiment of nature in a poet of 
the nineteenth century, a Byron or a Goethe, is the result of so 
great a number of actual perceptions, recollections, and ideas 
blended together, that it defies the analysis of the most accom- 
plished psychologist. The psychology of the sentiments, more- 
over, is far from being as advanced as that of the intellect. 

In studying the sentiments, we may do so either as naturalists 
or as metaphysicians. In the former case, we describe and classify 
the various phenomena of sensibility; this is the work of the 
psychologist. In the other case, we strive to reduce all these 
phenomena to their law, their ultimate cause ; and this is the work 
of the philosopher. 

The descriptive method is much indebted to contemporary 
physiologists and psychologists, and particularly to Mr. Bain in 
his great work, The Emotions and the Will. Still, there is no 
definite classification of phenomena of the affections, for this can 
only be founded on an embryology of the sentiments, which has, as 
yet, no existence. Every naturalist knows that a natural classi- 
fication is based on anatomy, physiology, and embryology. So, 
too, in psychology, until we have investigated and described the. 
manifestations of sentiment in the animal kingdom, and in 
the lower races, with a view to a comparative psychology; 
until we have traced the evolution of the sentiments, in the 
individual and in the species, in order to ascertain its genesis, 
it will be impossible to arrive at a natural, objective, stable classi- 
fication. 

Since Spinoza, no essential contribution has been made to a 
philosophical study of the ultimate reason of sensible phenomena. 
Physiologists — those, at least, who are acquainted with philosophy — 
appear to have the same opinion ; for Miiller copies the third 
book of Spinoza's Ethics, and Dr. Maudsley, in his recent work, 



82 Heredity. 



The Physiology and Pathology of Mind, says 'the admirable 
explanation of the passions given by Spinoza has never been 
surpassed, and certainly it will not be easy to surpass it' 

As the author of the Ethics profoundly observes, the ultimate 
explanation of all sensible phenomena is found in the fact of desire, 
' desire meaning appetite with self-consciousness/ and appetite 
being ' the very essence of man, in so far as it is directed to acts 
which tend towards his conservation.' Desire is the physical and 
moral constitution of man, inasmuch as it strives towards being 
and well-being, towards existence and development. It has its 
ultimate root in the region of the unconscious ; nor do we know 
how it becomes conscious, under that form of tendency which 
characterizes it. Desire is, like thought, one* of the forms of the 
unknowable : it is the unknown quantity, the x which serves to 
explain for us all phenomena of the affections. We may, indeed, 
reduce the endless variety of passions, emotions, and sentiments to 
two very broad states, viz. pleasure and pain — that is to say, an 
augmentation or diminution of being — but the cause of the two 
states is desire. It is just because there are in us tendencies that 
may be satisfied or opposed, that we feel pleasure or pain. In 
fact, when we experience pleasure or pain, we wish to preserve 
the one and to destroy the other ; but this conscious desire, 
sometimes regarded as the effect of the primitive unconscious 
desire, is, in reality, only a continuation of it. That state of 
tension which we call desire, and which lasts as long as we live, 
is modified each instant — and hence our joys and our sorrows ; 
these are but moments of a continuous process, and desire is, 
as it were, the woof on which the chances of life embroider all our 
emotions. 

In sensibility everything tends first of all and directly towards 
ourselves ; later and indirectly towards others. ' The love of self 
is the root of all the passions ; it is the supreme law of sensibility, 
the nature of which is to look only to its own good.' We love 
only ourselves ; or, in others, that which is like ourselves. Our 
sympathetic tendencies, manifold and strong though they be, are 
derived from, and may be ultimately reduced to, love of self 
without egotism. Sympathy being, in its genuine sense, ' the 
tendency of one individual to fall in with the emotional or active' 



Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 83 

states of others,' 1 to have a community of sentiments with a man 
or an animal is to resemble him in one respect ; it means being 
at once ourselves and another. Our selfish and our sympathetic 
tendencies are, therefore, both equally natural, but the former are 
based upon our own nature, the latter on an analogy with it. 
The admirable researches of physiologists on the sympathetic 
contagion of nervous diseases, may some day serve as the basis 
for new studies on the emotions. This is not the place to 
enter on them \ we would merely show that phenomena of the 
affections pertain to our inmost being. By this fact of cognition 
the outer world is let in upon us, and is reproduced in miniature, 
for thought is nothing but existence arriving at self-consciousness ; 
but our feeble personality is associated with this impersonal state 
by the pleasures and pains it produces in us ; for sensation and 
volition make us what we are. The modes of sensibility are so 
intimately connected with the organs, and with the whole con- 
stitution, that, a priori, we might conclude that they are transmitted 
by heredity. Experience will be found to verify this hypothesis. 

11. 

We can cite only striking facts — that is to say, passions so violent 
or so extravagant as to attract the attention of the physician or 
the historian ; yet any one, by questioning his own memory, may 
easily see that certain modes of sensation, and, consequently, of 
action, may be preserved hereditarily in families too obscure for 
notice. 

First, then, in animals the transmission of individual character 
is a fact so common as scarcely to need illustration. ' A horse 
that is naturally vicious, sulky, and restive,' says Buffon, ' will 
beget foals with the same character.' Every horse-breeder has 
verified this fact in regard to his stud. 

1 Heredity,' says Girou de Buzareingues, ' may, even in animals, 
extend to their most whimsical peculiarities. A hound taken from 
the teat, and bred far away from either parent, was incorrigibly 
obstinate and gun shy in circumstances where other dogs were 



1 Bain, The Emotions, ch. xii. , ' On Sympathy. ' The entire chapter should 
be studied. 



84 Heredity. 



eagerly excited. When a bystander expressed his surprise, he 
was told that there was nothing remarkable, " his father was the 
same." ' 

Nor is the transmission of characters less striking when races and 
species are crossed. As we have seen, when the domestic pig and 
the wild boar, or the wolf and the dog are crossed, some of the 
progeny inherit the savage, and others the domestic instincts. 
Similar facts have been observed by Girou in the crossing of 
different races of dogs and cats. • Lord Orford, as is well known,' 
says Darwin, ' crossed his famous greyhounds, which failed in 
courage, with a bull-dog — this breed being chosen from being 
deficient in the power of scent. At the sixth or seventh genera- 
tion there was not a vestige left of the form of the bull dog, but 
his courage and indomitable perseverance remained. 7 1 

The heredity of propensities, instincts, and passions in animals 
is very good evidence for this form of heredity in man, inasmuch 
as it does away with all superficial explanations drawn from edu- 
cation, example, habit, and all those external causes which are 
supposed to stand in lieu of heredity. And we may remark that 
this circumstance shows the value of a comparative psychology. 

If, now, we consider man, the first phenomena of the affections 
with which we meet are those of organic sensibility, or ccenaes- 
thesis, a kind of inner sense of touch whereby we are cognizant of 
the state of our organs, of the tension of our muscles, and of all 
muscular exertion in general, of the state of weariness, of pleasure, 
etc. This universal consciousness of existence, this Gemetngefukl, 
is the result of an infinite number of internal sensations proceeding 
from the nerves, the muscles, the circulation, the nutrition — in a 
word, from all those functions the sum of which constitutes what 
we call our manner of being. 

It cannot be doubted that heredity transmits these sensa- 
tions \ and it is probably in them that we must look for the true 
source of all resemblances of character. But these internal states 
are of so indeterminate a nature that it is almost impossible to 
prove their transmission. Nevertheless, we believe that the 
heredity of certain strange propensities, instincts, and dislikes, may 

1 Variation, etc., i. 57. 



Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 85 

be referred to these unconscious modes, which underlie all con- 
sciousness and all thought. 

Thus, families have been known in the members of which the 
smallest doses of opium produce a convulsive state. Zimmermann 
speaks of a family on whom coffee had a soporific effect, acting 
like opium, while opium itself produced no effect. Some families 
can hardly endure emetics, others purgative medicines, others 
blood-letting. 

Montaigne, who took an interest in the question of heredity, 
because he derived from his family a tendency to stone, inherited 
also an invincible repugnance for medicine. ' The antipathy,' 
he says, ' is hereditary. My father lived seventy-four years, my 
grandfather sixty-nine, and my great-grandfather almost eighty, 
and never tasted nor took any kind of physic, and for them any- 
thing not in common use was a drug. My ancestors, by some 
secret instinct and natural inclination, have ever loathed all 
manner of physic — the very sight of drugs was an abomination 
to my father. The Seigneur de Gerviac, my paternal uncle, who 
was an ecclesiastic, and sickly from birth, and who, notwith- 
standing, made his weak life to hold out to the age of sixty-seven, 
falling once into a high protracted fever, the physicians had word 
sent to him that he must surely die if he would not take some 
remedy. The good soul, affrighted as he was at this horrible 
sentence, said, ' Then it is all over with me.' But God soon after 
made their prognostications to prove vain. Possibly I have re- 
ceived from them my natural antipathy to physic' 1 

When, from the organic sensations diffused over the whole body, 
we pass to the wants and inclinations which have their seat in a 
special organ, it is easy to give indisputable instances of passions 
hereditarily transmitted. This we propose to show with regard to 
the three chief physical wants, viz. thirst, hunger, and the sexual 
appetite. 

The passion known as dipsomania, or alcoholism, is so frequently 
transmitted that all are agreed in considering its heredity as the 
rule. Not, however, that the passion for drink is always trans- 
mitted in that identical form, for it often degenerates into mania, 

1 Montaigne, Essays, ii. 37. 



86 Heredity. 



idiocy, and hallucination. Conversely, insanity in the parents may 
become alcoholism in the descendants. This continual metamor- 
phosis plainly shows how near passion comes to insanity, how 
closely the successive generations are connected, and, consequently, 
what a weight of responsibility rests on each individual. ' A 
frequent effect of alcoholism/ says Dr. Magnus Huss, ' is partial or 
total atrophy of the brain : the organ is reduced in volume, so that 
it no longer fills the bony case. The consequence is a mental 
degeneration, which in the progeny results in lunatics and idiots.' 

Gall speaks of a Russian family in which the father and grand- 
father had died prematurely, the victims of this taste for strong 
drink. The grandson, at the age of five, manifested the same 
liking in the highest degree. 

Girou de Buzareingues knew several families in which the taste 
for drink was transmitted by the mother. 

In our own times, Magnus Huss and Dr. Morel have collected 
so many facts bearing on the heredity of alcoholism, we need only 
select a few instances : — 

A man belonging to the educated class, and charged with 
important functions, succeeded for a long time in concealing his 
alcoholic habits from the eyes of the public ; his family were the only 
sufferers by it. He had five children, . only one of whom lived to 
maturity. Instincts of cruelty were manifested in this child, and 
from an early age its sole delight was to torture animals in every 
conceivable way. He was sent to school, but could not learn. 
In the proportions of the head he presented the characters of 
microcephalism, and in the field of intellectual acquisition he could 
only reach a certain low stage, beyond which further progress was 
impossible. At the age of nineteen he had to be sent to an asylum 
for the insane. 

Charles X , son of an eccentric and intemperate father, mani- 
fested instincts of great cruelty from infancy. He was sent at an 
early age to various schools, but was expelled from them all. Being 
forced to enlist in the army, he sold his uniform for drink, and 
only escaped a sentence of death on the testimony of physicians, 
who declared that he was the victim of an irresistible appetite. 
He was placed under restraint, and died of general paralysis. 

A man of an excellent family of labouring people was early 



Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 8 7 

addicted to drink, and died of chronic alcoholism, leaving seven 
children. The first two of these died at an early age, of convul- 
sions. The third became insane at twenty-two, and died an idiot. 
The fourth, after various attempts at suicide, fell into the lowest . 
grade of idiocy. The fifth, of passionate and misanthropic temper, 
broke off all relations with his family. His sister suffers from 
nervous disorder, which chiefly takes the form of hysteria, with 
intermittent attacks of insanity. The seventh, a very intelligent 
workman, but of nervous temperament, freely gives expression to 
the gloomiest forebodings as to his intellectual future. 

Dr. Morel gives the history of a family living in the Vosges, in 
wjiich the great-grandfather was a drunkard, and died from the 
effects of intoxication ; and the grandfather, subject to the same 
passion, died a maniac. He had a son far more sober than him- 
self, but subject to hypochondria, and of homicidal tendencies; the 
son of this latter was stupid, idiotic. Here we see in the first 
generation, alcoholic excess; in the second, hereditary dipsomania; 
in the third, hypochondria ; and in* the fourth, idiocy, and probable 
extinction of the race. 

Trelat, in his work, Folie Lucide, states that a lady of regular life 
and economical habits was subject to fits, of uncontrollable dipso- 
mania. Loathing her state, she called herself a miserable drunkard; 
and mixed the most disgusting substances with her wine — but all 
in vain, the passion was stronger than her will. The mother and 
the uncle of this lady had also been subject to dipsomania. 

Quite recently, Dr. Morel had again an opportunity of proving 
the hereditary effects of alcoholism, in the ' children of the Com- 
mune.' He inquired into the mental state of 150 children, ranging 
from ten to seventeen years of age, most of whom had been taken 
with arms in their hands behind the barricades. ' This examina- 
tion/ 'he says, ' has confirmed me in my previous convictions as to 
the baneful effects produced by alcohol, not only in the individuals 
who use this detestable drink to excess, but also in their descend- 
ants. On their depraved physiognomy is impressed the threefold 
stamp of physical, intellectual, and moral degeneracy/ 1 

1 For all the facts here cited, see Morel, Traite des Dtgenerescences, p. 103 ; 
Dr. Despine, Psychologie Naturelle, tome ii. 525 — 528 ; tome iii. 142 ; see also 
Lucas, i. 476, seq., and ii. 776. 



88 Heredity, 



As regards those passions which have their origin in the desire 
of eating, it is impossible to cite facts to prove their heredity so 
remarkably. Gluttony and voracity seldom lead to such deplor- 
able results as alcoholism. It is not, however, difficult to find 
families in which voracity is inherited. This has been observed in 
the Bourbons. Saint-Simon informs us that Louis XIV. was a 
man of extraordinary greediness, and the same was the case with 
his brother. Nearly all this king's sons were gourmands and great 
eaters, and this passion has been transmitted to their descendants. 

A more curious case, and one comparable to alcoholism, owing 
to its morbid character, is the fact of cannibalism which we have 
elsewhere cited, on the authority of Gall, Lordat, and Prosper 
Lucas. These authors tell of a Scotch family possessed of an 
instinctive propensity to cannibalism, which persisted through 
several generations : sundry members of this family paid the 
penalty of this with their lives, and others had to be placed under 
surveillance. 1 

It is probable that ,the children of cannibals, brought up in 
Europe, would exhibit the like tendencies in the midst of our 
civilization. Although no facts of this kind are recorded, it must 
be admitted that the incurable love of a wandering life manifested 
by these civilized sa'vages, and their inability to adapt themselves 
to our usages — instances of which will elsewhere be given 2 — some- 
what justify these presumptions. 

Earth-eating, which A. von Humboldt met with in all tropical 
countries, presents a curious instance of morbid heredity. ' The 
people/ says this naturalist, ' have an odd and almost irresistible 
liking for a kind of greasy potter's clay with a strong, unpleasant 
smell. The children have often to be locked up to prevent them 
from running out after recent rain and eating clay.' He states 
that the women who are engaged in the potteries on the Rio 
Magdalena swallow great lumps of clay. At the mission of San 
Barjo, he saw an Indian child who, according to the statement of 
its mother, would hardly eat anything but earth ; the child, in con- 
sequence, looked like a skeleton. The negroes of Guinea have 
the same propensity ; they swallow a yellowish kind of earth which 

1 Lucas, i. 391, 497. 2 See Part Fourth, ch. ii. 



Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passiojts. 89 

they call caouac, and when transported as slaves to America they 
try to procure a similar clay. 

There is scarce need to insist on the heredity of all that is 
connected with the sexual appetite. This passion is associated 
with an organ which depends on the law of heredity. A multitude 
of names famous in history offer themselves in support of our 
position. Augustus and the two Julias; Agrippina and Nero; 
Maroziaand Benedict IX. ; Alexander VI. and his children; Louise 
de Savoie and Francis L, etc. In all classes of society analogous 
facts may be found, and any one may know families in which this 
unfortunate disposition is hereditary. 

' I knew/ says Prosper Lucas, ' a very handsome man, of an 
excellent constitution, but possessed of an unbridled passion for 
wine and women. He had a son, who, while yet but a lad, carried 
both these vices to excess. He carried off a mistress from his 
father, who never forgave the offence to the day of his death. 
This was the outset of his career ; he was afterwards ruined, and 
reduced to the utmost penury by harlots. His son died young, 
but incorrigible, and from the same vices as his father and 
grandfather.' 

' But here/ says the same author, ' is a fact perhaps still more 
instructive. A man-cook, of great talent in his calling, has had all 
his life, and has still, at the age of sixty years, a passion for 
women. To this passion he adds unnatural crime. One of his 
natural sons, living apart from him, does not know even his father, 
and, though not yet quite nineteen, has from childhood given all 
the signs of extreme lust, and, strange to say, he, like his father, 
is equally addicted to either sex.' 1 

There are also well-authenticated instances of a heredity of a 
propensity for rape. The Droit (newspaper) states that in 1846, at 

Pontoise, a father, named Alexandre de M , was so unfortunate 

as to have his eldest son, barely sixteen years of age, violate and 
murder his cousin; and recently his second son attempted to 
violate a little girl. The punishment of these youths was mitigated, 
because it was proved at the trial that they were under the in- 
fluence of hereditary insanity. 2 

1 P. Lucas, i. 479. 2 Ibid. i. 504. 



90 Heredity. 



in. 

If from propensities which, in their origin at least, are purely- 
physical, we pass to the consideration of more complex passions, 
independent, or rather seemingly so, of the organism — for example, 
gambling, avarice, theft, and murder — we shall find these also 
subject to the law of heredity. 

The passion for play often attains such a pitch of madness as 
to be a form of insanity, and, like it, transmissible. 'A lady of my 
acquaintance, 7 says Da Gama Machado, 'and who possessed a 
large fortune, had a passion for gambling, and passed whole nights 
at play. She died young, of pulmonary disease. Her eldest son, 
who was very like his mother, had the same passion for play. He, 
too, like his mother, died of consumption, and at about the same 
age. His daughter, who resembled him, inherited the same taste, 
and died young.' 1 

Avarice produces the same consequences. 'In several instances, 7 
says Maudsley, 2 in his Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, ' in 
which the father has toiled upwards from poverty to vast wealth, 
with the aim and hope of founding a family, I have witnessed 
the results in a mental and physical and mental degeneracy, which 
has sometimes gone as far as the extinction of the family in the 
third or fourth generation. When the evil is not so extreme as 
madness or ruinous vice, the savour of a mother's influence 
having been present, it may still be manifest in an instinctive 
cunning and duplicity, and an extreme selfishness of nature — a 
nature not having the capacity of a true moral conception or 
altruistic feeling. Whatever opinion other experimental observers , 
may hold, I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting / 
rich, absorbing the whole energies of a life, does predispose to ' 
mental degeneration in the offspring, — either to moral defect, or 
to intellectual and moral deficiency, or to outbreaks of positive 
insanity under the conditions of life. 7 

The heredity of the tendency to thieving is so generally admitted 
that it would be superfluous to bring together here facts which 
abound in every record of judicial proceedings. One, but that 
decisive, may be cited from Dr. Despine 7 s Psychologie Naturelle, 
the genealogy of the Chretien family. 

1 Da Gama Machado, p. 142. 2 Maudsley, p. 234. 



Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 9 1 

Jean Chretien, the common ancestor, had three sons — Pierre, 
Thomas, and Jean-Baptiste. 1. Pierre had a son, Jean-Francois, 
who was condemned for life to hard labour for robbery and 
murder. 2. Thomas had two sons : (1) Francois, condemned 
to hard labour (travaux forces) for murder, and (2) Martin, 
condemned to death for murder. Martin's son died in Cayenne, 
whither he had been transported for robbery. 3. Jean-Baptiste 
had a son, Jean-Francois, whose wife was Marie Taure' (belong- 
ing to a family of incendiaries). This Jean-Frangois had seven 
children : (1) Jean-Frangois, found guilty of several robberies, 
died in prison ; (2) Benoist, fell off a roof which he had scaled, 

and was killed ; (3) X , nicknamed Clain, found guilty of 

several robberies, died at the age of twenty-five ; (4) Marie 
Reine, died in prison, whither she had been sent for theft; (5) 
Marie-Rose, same fate, same deeds ; (6) Victor, now in jail for 
theft ; (7) Victorine, married one Lemaire : their son was con- 
demned to death for murder and robbery. 1 

We have given this instance because it cuts short all explan- 
ations drawn from the influence of education and example. 
Doubtless it is difficult in many cases to determine what is due to 
education, and what to nature ; and the children of thieves are not 
very likely to be trained to honesty by their parents ; but still 
nature is always the stronger agency. Sundry authors, and among 
them Gall, have given instances of a disposition to thieving, where 
any parental influence was impossible. He gives one instance still 
more curious — that of two conflicting heredities : one good, from 
the mother, and one bad, from the father. 

In 1845, th- e Cour d' Assises of La Seine condemned to severe 
and degrading penalties three out of the five members of a family 
of thieves. The father of this family had not found in his children 
the dispositions he desired. He had been compelled to .use com- 
pulsion with his wife and his two eldest children, but they, to the 
last, refused to obey him. His eldest daughter, on the other hand, 
trod instinctively in her father's steps, and was passionate and 

1 Despine, tome ii. p. 410. Several facts of a like kind may be found in 
this work. Observe the tendency of such families to unite, thus conferring the 
hereditary transmission. See also Lucas, i. p. 480, seq* 



92 Heredity. 



violent like him. She took after her father, the rest of the children 
after their mother. 

We may apply to the instinct for murder what we have just said 
of thieving. Instances of hereditary transmission are equally 
conclusive and equally numerous. We have already se.en the 
heredity of homicide added, in a portion of a family, to the 
heredity of theft ; and it is needless to cite cases that may be 
found in abundance on all sides. 1 Here, however, are two 
instances, in which the circumstances of the crime remove all 
doubt as to its hereditary transmission. 

In the Annales Medico-Psychologiques for 1853 we read that two 

girls, Adele and Lucie H , aged thirteen and seventeen, were 

bound apprentices at Paris. Adele was of remarkably gentle 
manners, and industrious ; but Lucie was of an unsociable dis- 
position, and disagreeable to her mistress and her companions. 
Enraged at her state of isolation, she endeavoured by threats and 
caresses to persuade her sister to murder their mistress. As Adele 
refused, Lucie passed a stay-lace round her neck, intending to 
strangle her. Adele cried out, and the mistress came to the spot. 
Lucie, disappointed in her hope of an accomplice, resolved to take 
her vengeance herself. She collected bits of glass and ground them 
to a powder; this she mixed with her mistress's dinner. The latter 
for several days suffered internal pain, the cause of which was 
unknown, until she discovered the pounded glass in Lucie's hands. 
The girl was arrested, but on her trial it was proved that her 
grandfather had, during his life, made many attempts at murder, 
and at last strangled his wife. His children never showed the 
least symptoms of homicidal mania ; it reappeared, as we have 
seen, in the second generation. 

In all cases where hereditary transmission takes the form of 
atavism, it is clear that the influence of education has no weight. 
The same may be said of all precocious homicidal acts, and of 
those committed out of frivolous motives, like the following : — 

A boy of fourteen, one of a family in bad repute, went, armed 
with his bow, to a neighbouring village feast. He met on the way 
a little girl of six, who had in her hand thirty sous to buy bread, 

1 See Lucas, i. 504, 520; Despine, ii. 281, 283; Mireau, Psychologic Morbide, 
3!9> 3 21 - 



Hei'edity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 93 

knocked her down, strangled her, threw her body into a field at a 
distance from the road, took the thirty sous, and went on to the 
village feast to spend the money and enjoy himself.- 

The innate, incurable taste for a vagabond life shown so 
strikingly in inferior races, and in the gypsies, is also unquestion- 
ably a consequence of heredity. These facts will be considered 
from the social standpoint in the fourth part of this work. 

The conclusion, perhaps unexpected, to which we are led by all 
the foregoing arguments, is this — that insanity very much resembles 
passion ; and this statement is to be taken in the strict sense of 
the words. The common opinion readily enough admits that 
both obscure the intellect and paralyze the will, but is loth to 
admit that a violent passion is, in its generating causes, identical 
with insanity. When, however, we read judicial records, and 
especially medical annals, in search of facts to show the heredity 
of homicide, theft, or alcoholism, then, side by side, with the some- 
what homogeneous facts wherein we see the passions of ancestors 
transmitted in identical form to descendants, we find other hetero- 
geneous facts, in which what is passion in the former becomes 
insanity in the latter, and vice versa. Such facts are very 
numerous. We have not cited any of these, though they are 
excellent instances of heredity. As we restrict ourselves to facts 
that are absolutely incontestable, we have put aside from con- 
sideration the whole question of heredity by metamorphosis. 

We do not maintain that every violent passion or every crime 
is only a variety of insanity, but only that in many cases the 
conditions which produce both are identical. ' Nothing in Nature 
is limited and isolated : all things are connected together by 
intermediate links, which attentive observation sooner or later 
discovers, where, at first glance, they were not even suspected. It 
were to be wished, in the interest of science, that inquiries should 
be made as to the progenitors of criminals for at least two or three 
generations. This would be an excellent means of demonstrating 
the kinship which exists between those cerebral infirmities which 
produce the psychic anomalies leading to crime, and the patho- 
logical affections of the nerve centres, particularly the brain. The 
fact, demonstrated by Drs. Ferrus and Lelut, that insanity is much 
more frequent among criminals than other persons, goes far to 



94 Heredity. 



prove that crime and insanity are closely connected/ x The 
number of criminals whose ancestors have given signs of insanity 
is very great. Verger, the assassin of the Archbishop of Paris, was 
of this number. His mother and one of his brothers perished, 
prior to his crime, the victims of suicidal mania. 

Dr. Bruce Thompson, in his recent work on The Hereditary Nature 
of Crime, adopts this conclusion, and supports it by figures. Of 
5,432 prisoners, he found 673 whose mental state appeared to him 
to be unsound, though, according to the general opinion, they 
were not subjects for a lunatic asylum. Out of 904 convicts in 
prison at Perth, 440 were recommitted, thus showing the fatal 
power of the passions. In a house of detention there were 109 
prisoners belonging to only 50 families ; among them were eight 
members of one family, and several families were represented by 
two or three members. 

It is beyond our purpose to inquire to what extent passion 
shares in the fatal character of insanity, or to ascertain the 
practical consequences of this. The argument simply shows that 
(1) passions which are inexplicable, so long as they are studied in 
the isolated individual, find their explanation so soon as we have 
studied them in their metamorphoses through generations, and 
brought them under the great law of heredity ; (2) that passion is 
so near insanity that the two forms of heredity are really one : so 
that the preceding section is, as it were, a chapter, detached and 
in advance, on morbid heredity. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HEREDITY OF THE WILL. 



I. 



The title given to this chapter is hardly exact, and is only 
selected for want of a better. Yet it seems to us that in the 
statesmen and great soldiers of whom we are about to speak, the 
will must be regarded as the dominant faculty. They must, no 



1 Despine, Psychologic Naturelle, iL 983. 



Heredity of the Will. 95 

doubt, furthermore, possess a broad and penetrating intellect, 
passion to rouse men and enforce obedience ; but their distin- 
guishing characteristic is action, and that strong, bold nature 
which commands. It is only through the will one man gains an 
irresistible influence over others. A lofty intellect excites admira- 
tion, but it is only a strong will that demands obedience. 

The word ' will ' is here used, of course, in its ordinary sense, 
and as commonly employed. We lay aside for the moment all 
those philosophical discussions about free-will and its relations to 
heredity, 1 and here consider the will only as the active faculty, 
without inquiring whether the tendency to action be the result of 
individual inclination, of a fixed idea, or of an invincible passion. 

The ancient moralists distinguished three kinds of life, according 
as pleasure, action, or contemplation was looked on as the end of 
man ; they thought that a choice must be made between the three. 
They all, or nearly all, agreed in placing the life of pleasure in 
the lowest rank ; but they long discussed the question whether the 
active life or the contemplative were preferable. This discussion 
is infinite, for every man decides according to his tastes, his tem- 
perament, and his habits. Men of action and men of thought 
contribute, each in his own way, to the common weal — the former 
sway the present, the latter prepare the future. The distinction, 
however, which lies at the base of this discussion is founded on a 
true observation of human nature. Except the mere sensualist, 
every man, from the highest to the lowest, is either active or 
contemplative : every one is a Caesar or a Plato, as far as his 
intellect will allow. He who in some obscure village, in some 
remote land, takes trouble to conduct some small business, is akin 
to those who govern great states, or who win great battles. He 
who prefers leisure, who loves to dream and meditate, who aspires 
to some rude education as his ideal, is akin to great thinkers and 
great poets. The more closely we study men, the better we see 
that they may be brought under these two. categories. Even 
where the contrast is not striking, it still exists, and we detect it 
when we observe more deeply. ' The keener the mind, the more 
men of originality will it discover.' 

1 See Part Second, ch. iii. 



96 Heredity. 



We have already seen that the contemplative faculties — imagina- 
tion and simple intellect — are transmissible by heredity. History 
must answer whether it is the same with the active faculties. How- 
ever, we must first consider what is meant by active faculties. 

So far, we have employed a method of analysis, which, 
though really artificial, was necessary and sufficiently exact. We 
have been enabled to examine instinct, perception, imagination, 
memory, intellect, sentiments, and have inquired whether each of 
these modes of mental life, taken separately, is hereditary. In the 
present instance, the analytical method is impossible. With the 
statesman, the soldier, and, generally, with those who are called men 
of action, the play of the various faculties must be simultaneous. 
Their processes are essentially synthetic. In them, the work of 
each faculty counts only in so far as it concurs in the general 
result • the aim to which all means are subordinate. In the 
statesman, moreover, the mental activity must be exerted in every 
direction. M. Guizot somewhere observes that public life is l the 
highest occupation of man's faculties.' If we reflect on the con- 
ditions it demands, and the faculties it requires, we may, perhaps, 
agree with him. The great advantage of public life is that it 
develops simultaneously our various faculties, and that it is, as has 
been said, of a synthetic nature. A thinker, a man of science, 
may isolate himself in the highest regions of intellect, but may be 
without sentiment, and unsuited for action. An artist may, by 
his imapination, be enchanted with the most delightful dreams, 
and yet know nothing of the real world. For politics, on the 
other hand, is required an intellect capable of grasping at once 
the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete. Is 
a statesman incapable of generalization ? — he can have no broad 
views, and is the slave of routine. He cannot, moreover, like the 
man of science, content himself with general results : he must 
decide particular and definite cases ; hence he must be able to 
grasp at once the whole, and its details. Furthermore, his re- 
flections must of necessity result in acts. He is no speculative 
theorizer : for him theory is but a means, action alone is his end. 
Hence he is characterized by a strong power of will, always exer- 
cised, as also by the qualities which this implies ; viz. boldness, 
courage, self-confidence, and mastery over the timid and irresolute 



Heredity of the Will. 97 

Thus, a talent for observation at once minute, broad, and rapid ; 
a ready and faithful memory, recalling with exactitude and 
without hesitation the results of theory ; a great presence of mind, 
not to be disconcerted by unforeseen circumstances ; an energetic 
will ; and, as a basis, physical strength, and certain bodily qualities 
— such are the faculties which must be combined, and act simulta- 
neously, with the rapidity and certainty of instinct. 

History shows that this sum of qualities is transmissible, as a 
whole or in part — for it sometimes happens that the original com- 
bination is broken up in passing to the descendants, who can 
collect but fragments (as Pitt and his grand-daughter). Like every 
other faculty, strength of will may be hereditary. This was ob- 
served by Voltaire with regard to the Guises. ' The physical, 
which is " father of the moral," transmits the same character from 
father to son for ages. The Appii were ever proud and inflexible ; 
the Catos always austere. The whole line of the Guises was bold, 
rash, factious, full of the most insolent pride, and of the most 
winning politeness. From Frangois de Guise down to that one 
who, all alone, and unexpectedly, put himself at the head of the 
people of Naples, they were all — in look, courage, and character — 
above ordinary men. I have seen full-length portraits of Frangois 
de Guise, of Balafre and his son : they were all six feet high, and 
they all possess the same features — there is the same courage, the 
same audacity on the brow, in the eyes, and in the attitude/ 1 We 
know not how the will is thus transmitted ; but when we see that its 
energy and its weakness are connected with certain states of the 
organism, and that physical strength commonly renders men bold 
and courageous, while physical weakness makes them timid, Ave 
can scarcely doubt that this transmission takes place by means of 
the organs, and that it is, in fact, physiological. 2 

Not to dwell on this point, we now proceed to note the most 
important cases of the heredity of the active faculties, quoting 
historical facts. These fall naturally under the two categories of 
statesmen and soldiers, though many men have been both. Here 

1 Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Art. * Caton. ' 

2 Concerning the will as groundwork of the personality and character, see 
Part Fourth, ch. iii. 

H 



98 Heredity. 



we must guard against the error of taking high official position as 
a proof of personal merit In letters, science, or art, where every- 
one is judged directly by his works, this illusion is impossible. In 
political life, the fame of ancestors, alliances, and power previously 
acquired, count for much, and sometimes supply the lack of all 
else. To avoid the danger of confounding an external and con- 
ventional heredity with that which is internal and natural, we cite 
none but the most indisputable cases. 

II. — STATESMEN. 

Adams, John (1785, 1826), second President of the United States; 
His son, John Quincey, sixth President of the United States ; 
His grandson, Charles Francis, American Minister to England, 
author of a Life of John Ada7ns. 
Antonia (the Gens Antonia) reckoned among its most dis- 
tinguished members Marcus Antonius, the orator, Marcus 
Antonius, the critic, and Mark Antony, the rival of Caesar. 
Arteveld, Jacques, the famous brewer of Flanders ; 

His son, Philippe, who continued his father's political work. 
Bentinck, William, Duke of Portland, Prime Minister of England, 
1783, 1784, and 1807 — 1810; 
His son, Henry, Governor-General of India ; he introduced there 

the freedom of the press and abolished Suttee ; 
His grandson, member of Parliament, eminent financier, and a 
leading statesman. 1 
C^sar. He might equally have been ranked among the soldiers, 
but is placed here on account of his family • 
His mother, Aurelia, seems to have been no ordinary woman. 
His daughter, Julia, who married Pompey and died prematurely, 
was remarkable for her wit and beauty. Historians have 
observed the transmission of certain hereditary characters in 
the family of the Caesars. ' There existed in all the Caesars/ 
says J.- J. Ampere, 'a morbid principle. The first was epileptic; 
his nephew (the Emperor Augustus) was a life-long valetudi- 
narian ; an acrid humour disfigured the countenance of 
Tiberius ; Caligula was extraordinarily pale, slept little, and 
was constantly delirious; Claudius was physically inclined 
to imbecility ; ' Nero gave unequivocal indications of insanity ; 
Tiberius, adopted stepson of Augustus, ' had fine and noble 



Heredity of the Will. 99 

features, and was remarkably like his mother, Livia. His 
thin, dry lips show his crafty and ruthless soul.' The mother 
of Mark Antony belonged to the Julian family. 
Charles the Fifth. There is a curious similarity between this 
sovereign and Don Carlos. On comparing Don Carlos with 
his celebrated grandfather, we discover such striking features 
of resemblance between them, that we cannot but see here an 
instance of reversional heredity, or atavism. 

Don Carlos was the son of Philip II. and Dona Maria of 
Portugal. His mother, who died four days after giving him 
birth, appears in history only as an insignificant personage. 
As for the father, he was in nearly every respect the antithesis 
of his sons. 1 The character of Don Carlos, his temperament 
and his physical habit, are inexplicable unless we go back to 
Charles V. 

Charles V. was slow in his development, and grew old early. 
He was nearly twenty-one before he could grow a beard. 
He was rather below the medium stature, his health was 
feeble, and his face long and sad in expression ; he spoke 
slowly, and stammered. The development of his intellect 
was as slow as that of his body. He remained for a long 
time absolutely dependent on Chievres, his tutor. His 
phlegmatic temperament saved him from excesses, although 
his gluttony is well known. ' Before getting up, a capon was 
usually served to him, dressed with sugar, milk, and spice. He 
dined at noon, off a large number of dishes. Soon after 
vespers he took another meal, and for supper, later in the 
evening, he would take anchovies, or other strong, gross food. 
Even at the monastery of San Yuste he ate with avidity, 
before the eyes of his physician, frogs' legs and eel pies.' 2 

Don Carlos, according to the account of the Venetian envoys, 
and of the imperial ambassador at Madrid, 3 was a prince of 
very inferior stature — his features ugly and disagreeable. 
His temperament was melancholy, nor had he any taste either 
for study or for manly exercises. He spoke with difficulty 

1 See the contrast in Gachard, Don Carlos and Philippe II, p. 237, sea. 

2 Prescott, Reign of Philip II., vol. i. ch. 9. 

3 Gachard and Prescott, vol. iv. 



ioo Heredity. 



and slowly, and his words were disconnected. ' His voice 
is thin and shrill; he is embarrassed when he begins to 
speak, and the words come with difficulty. He pronounces 
his r's and his /'s badly.' At the age of twenty-one he had 
his tongue-string cut. He had little desire for women, but 
was a glutton, like his grandfather. In his prison, he brought 
on his own death by his excess in eating. He took to a 
diet consisting of partridge pie, pie-crust, spiced meats, and 
iced drinks. And he began these excesses very early in the 
day. i He eats so much, and with such ravenousness,' writes 
the imperial ambassador, 'as to surpass belief; scarcely has 
he finished one meal when he is ready for another. 7 

The reader will observe that in the foregoing comparison we 
have not mentioned Don Carlos's violence of temper, which, 
also, we incline to think hereditary. As an infant, he would 
bite the breast of his nurse ; there were three of them bitten 
so severely by him as to have their lives endangered. His 
short life is full of cruel acts. He used to beat his servants ; 
he made an unskilful shoemaker eat a pair of boots ; he 
wanted to burn down a house because a drop of water fell 
from it on his head. Later, while in prison, he would have 
the floor of his chamber flooded with water, and then would 
walk about barefooted and almost naked on the icy boards. 
Several times during the night he would have a pan full of ice 
and snow brought to his bed, keeping it there for hours. 
(Prescott, vii. 12.) 

These, and sundry other acts, show mental derangement. If 
now, the reader will bear in mind that Charles V. ? s mother 
was Juana the Mad, 1 Queen of Castille, he will see in Don 

1 According to recent investigations, trie restraint of Juana was in a great 
measure due to political reasons ; but even if her insanity lias been exaggerated, 
it must be admitted that she had a strange disposition, and a morbid sensibility. 
She was subject to ' frightful hallucinations.' (See Hildebrand, Revue des Deux 
Mondes, 1866, June I.) Diseased, trembling with fever, and crippled by gout, 
he (Charles V.) nevertheless dragged his bones from place to place, disquieting 
the whole world by his own unrest, till an evil trick of fortune drove so wise 
a man into the convent of San Yuste, and afflicted him with the madness of 
Jane the Mad and Charles the Bold. Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. vii. 



Heredity of the Will. 101 

Carlos's insane acts fresh proof of reversional heredity. This 
same observation was made at the time by the Venetian 
ambassadors. ' He has been suffering almost uninterruptedly 
during the past three years from quartan fever, attended at 
times by mental alienation — a thing the more worthy of note, 
inasmuch as he seems to have inherited this disorder from 
his grandfather and great grandmother. ' 

Conde. Of the family of Conde we will speak hereafter. 

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste. The family of this celebrated minister 
reckoned several distinguished members ; 
His brother, Charles, statesman and diplomatist ; 
His son, Jean-Baptiste, commanded the expedition against 

Genoa, in 1684 ; 
Another son, Jacques, archbishop, member of the French 

Academy ; 
A nephew, Charles's son, diplomatist. 

Cornelia (the Gens Cornelia). This family, which we shall 
meet again under the head of the Scipios, reckoned from 
P. Cornelius Scipio, Magister Equitum in 396, to Scipio 
Nasica, who died in 56, without issue, nineteen consuls, one 
dictator, two tribunes (the Gracchi), two quaestors, one sedile, 
one censor, two magistri equitum. To this family belongs 
the famous Sylla. 

Cromwell. His direct descendants are mediocre 3 but we may 
mention with him two collaterals — the patriot Hampden, 
uncle's son to Oliver; and Edmond Waller, the poet, 
Hampden's nephew. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, novelist, Prime Minister of England in 
1868; 
His father, Isaac, author of Curiosities of Literature, etc. 

Flavia (the Gens Flavia) had for its principal representatives 
Vespasian, Titus. Domitian. Vespasian's avarice was here- 
ditary. < The founder of this family was a Cisalpine, Petro 
by name, a centurion under Pompey, who afterwards called 
himself Titus Flavius Petronius, and became a banker's clerk. 
His son, Flavius Sabinus, a tax collector in Asia, afterwards 
followed the trade of a usurer in Helvetia. One of his sons 
was Vespasianus, Proconsul of Africa. He bought, and sold 



102 Heredity. 



and sold again horses and mules, and hence his nickname, 
" the Jockey." ' 
Fox, Charles James, Pitt's rival ; 

His grandfather ; a statesman ; 

His father. Lord Holland, Secretary at War ; 

His brother, Stephen, statesman, and leader of the House of 
Commons ; 

Several nephews, statesmen, authors, and generals. 
Grenville, George, Premier in 1763. Galton reckons twelve 

notable members in this family. 
Guise, Francois, Due de ; 

His brother, Charles, Cardinal de Lorraine ; 

His son, Henri, assassinated at the assembly of the States at 
Blois ; 

His son, the Cardinal, killed at the same time \ 

His grandson, Charles, who, with his uncle, the Due de Mayenne, 
fought against Henri IV. ; 

His great-grandson conspired against Cardinal Richelieu. 
Lamoignon, a celebrated family of magistrates, 'one of those 
families whose members seem born only to practise justice 
and charity, wherein virtue is transmitted with the blood, is 
upheld by good counsels, and is exalted by great examples/ 
(Flechier.) Charles de Lamoignon, born 15 14, was about to 
succeed to the chancellorship when he died, in 1572. He 
had twenty children, among whom were Pierre, a wonderful 
child, who died prematurely, and Chretien, who was Preside7it 
a mortier. Chretien had a son, Guillaume de Lamoignon, 
First President of the Parliament, and the most celebrated of 
his family ; Flechier preached his funeral sermon. His son,. 
Chretien-Frangois, President a mortier, was an associate of 
Boileau, Racine, etc. His brother, Nicolas, was Intendant 
at Montauban, Pau, Poitiers, and Montpellier ; he was 
implicated in the Dragonnades, but displayed great ability. 
Guillaume, son of Chretien-Francois, First President, exiled 
by Maupeou. Chretien-Francois II., great grandson of 
Boileau's friend, Chancellor in 1787. Malesherbes was of 
this family. 
Medici. The following is their genealogy, abridged. The family 



Heredity of the Will. 



was of middle-class origin ; in the fourteenth century, Silvestro 
was Gonfaloniere, or head of the Florentine Republic. 

Silvestro 



Cosmo 
Father of his country Lorenzo 

Pietro I. 



Lorenzo theJMagnificent 

Pietro II. Giovanni (Leo X.) Giovanni de Medici 

(II grande diavolo) 



Lorenzo II. Cosmo (first Grand-duke) 

I I. 

Catherine de Medicis Francis I. 



Marie de Medicis 

As regards the relations of the Medicis to the three kings of 
France, Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III., see Michelet, 
Histoire de France, vol. ix. He gives some very ill-digested 
physiological details. 
Mirabeau. In the opinion of his father, the ' Friend of Man ' 
{ami des hommes), possessed ' all the vile qualities of his mater- 
nal stock.' 

1 The correspondence of the great tribune's father and uncle, 
and the notice on the life of his grandfather, give evidence 
of a peculiar race, and exhibit the characters of a grand 
and lofty originality. Our Mirabeau needed but to descend 
from such stock, in order to spread himself abroad, to shower 
down as he has done, and to give of himself to all, so that 
we might name him the enfant perdu, the enfant prodigue et 
sublime of his race.' (Ste.-Beuve.) 
J Peel, Sir Robert, thrice Premier ; 

His fat/ier, a great manufacturer, founded the family; 

Two brothers and three sons of Peel's have held high judicial 
or administrative positions. 
Pitt, William, Lord Chatham, Premier in 1766, married a Gren- 
ville. (See Grenville.) 

His son, William, Premier at twenty-five, the famous rival of Fox; 



104 Heredity. 



His grand-daughter. Lady Hester Stanhope, the ' Sibyll of the 
Libanus.' We shall meet with this family again, when we 
speak of the law. 
Richelieu, Armand du Plessis, Cardinal, Due de; 

His father, Francois, Grand-Prevot of France, showed some 
diplomatic ability ; 

The grandson of his brother Henri, Due de Richelieu, one of 
the most curious characters of the eighteenth century, whose 
son was the famous Due de Frousac, and whose grandson was 
the Due de Richelieu, Minister of Louis XVIII. 
Sheridan. ' The name of Sheridan,' says Galton, ' is peculiarly 
associated with a clearly marked order of brilliant and 
engaging, but "ne'er-do-weel," qualities. Brilliant social and 
conversational qualities, with a dash of profligacy, are found 
among numerous members of this family ; 

His father wrote a dictionary, and was manager of Drury Lane 
Theatre ; 

His grandfather, friend and correspondent of Swift ; 

His son, i a Sheridan all over : ' 

His grand-daughter, Caroline, Mrs. Norton, poetess and novelist. 
Temple, Henry, Lord Palmerston. This family has had many 
remarkable members, among whom we may name Palmer- 
ston's great grand-uncle, Sir William Temple, author and 
statesman. 
Theodosius, Roman Emperor. In this family talent and vigour 
seem to have descended particularly to the female members. 
The Count Theodosius 

Theodosius 



I I I I 

Arcadius Honorius Pulcheria Placidia 



Pulcheria Theodosius II. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, Premier, 1721-42 ; 

His father, Sir Edward, a distinguished member of Parliament 
in the reign of Charles II. ; 

His brother, Horace, a diplomatist of great ability ; 



Heredity of the Will. 105 

Two sons, Edward, in government employ, and Horace, a man 
of letters. Byron calls him ' the incomparable.' 
Witt. John de Witt and his brother Cornelius. 

III. — SOLDIERS. 

Alexander the Great, died at the age of thirty-two, had but one 
posthumous son, who was assassinated at the age of twelve ; 
His mother, Olympias, an ambitious, intriguing woman ; 
His father, Philip, King of Macedon; 

His brother (half-brother) Ptolemy, Philip's son by Arsinoe, 
though this filiation is very questionable. The family of the 
Ptolemies will hereafter be mentioned. 
His grand-nephew (or great-grand-nephew?) Pyrrhus, King of 
Epirus, whose resemblance to Alexander was long since 
noticed. 
Berwick, Duke of, natural son of James II. and Arabella Church- 
hill; 
His maternal uncle, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon. The genealogy of this family is so well 

known, that the mere mention is enough. 
Charlemagne. The direct succession is noteworthy ; 
His great-grandfather, Pepin d'Heristal ; 
His grandfather, Charles Martel ; 
His father, Pepin the Short. 
Coligny, Admiral Gaspard de, murdered in the massacre of Saint 
Bartholomew ; 
His father, Gaspard, Marshal of France, gained distinction during 

the wars in Italy ; 
His uncle, Due de Montmorency, Constable of France. 
Doria, Andrea, Genoese admiral and statesman; 

His nephew, Filippino, succeeded him as admiral and defeated 
the French. 
Eugene, Prince, ranked by Napoleon with Turenne and Frederick 
the Great; 
His grand-uncle, Cardinal de Mazarin. 
Gustavus Adolphus. Equally remarkable as statesman and 
general ; spoke French, Italian, Latin, and German ; restored 
the University of Upsala ; 



io6 Heredity. 



His daughter, Christina, who induced Grotius, Descartes, and 
Vossius to reside at Stockholm ; 

His great-grandfather, Gustavus Vasa. The latter had a daughter 
Cecilia, who was in many respects very like Christina ; 

His grand-nephew, the romantic Charles XII. 
Hannibal, the greatest of a distinguished family of soldiers ; 

mis father, Hamilcar Barca ; 

His brothers, Hasdrubal and Mago. 
Maurice of Nassau, one of the greatest captains of his time, was 
Governor of the Low Countries ; 

His father, William of Orange, ' the Silent ; ' 

His grandfather, Maurice, Elector of Saxony ; 

His brother, Frederick William, Statholder ; 

His great-nephew, William III., Statholder, and King of England ; 

His nephew, Turenne. 
Napier, Sir Charles, conqueror of Scinde ; 

His great-grandfather invented logarithms, and the family 
reckons eight members distinguished as generals or statesmen. 
Ptolemies, the family of the Lagidae ; 

The founder of this dynasty was Ptolemy Soter, son of Lagos, 
or, according to some, of Philip and Arsinoe. There were in 
this family three distinguished men : Ptolemy Soter ; his son, 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, and his g?-andson, Ptolemy Euergetes. 

The rapid decline of the Lagidse seems to be the result of 
heredity, produced by intermarriage. Ptolemy II. married 
first his niece and then his sister; Ptolemy IV., his sister; 
Ptolemy VI. and Ptolemy VII. brothers, both married, con- 
secutively, the same sister; Ptolemy VIII. married two of his 
sisters ; Ptolemy XII. and Ptolemy XIII. married their sister, 
the famous Cleopatra. 
Saxe, Marshal, natural son of Augustus II., King of Poland; he 

was great-grandfather of Georges Sand. 
Scipio, P. Cornelius (Africanus Major) the greatest soldier of the 
Gens Cornelia, of which we have already spoken; 

His father, who was conquered by Hannibal ; 

His grandfather, drove the Carthaginians out of Corsica and 
Sardinia ; 

His daughter, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi ; 

His two gra?idsons, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. 



Heredity and National Character. 107 

Tromp, Marten, and his son, Cornelius van Tromp, famous Dutch 

admirals. 
Turenne, probably the greatest general produced by France, 
prior to Napoleon ; 
His father, Henri, Due de Bouillon, pupil of the Ecolede Henri 

IV., was leader of the Huguenots ; 
Turenne's relationship to the house of Orange has been already 
mentioned. 

It would be easy, by searching history, to collect a far larger 
number of cases of heredity. Those here given are sufficient to- 
disprove all idea of accidental coincidence. It is not surprising 
that cases of heredity seem to be rarer among great soldiers than, 
elsewhere. Many soldiers gifted with great natural abilities must 
have died before they could attain to fame or found a family. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HEREDITY AND NATIONAL CHARACTER. 
I. 

We have thus hastily traversed the field of history, noting a few 
important cases of mental heredity in families of artists, men of 
science, literary men, soldiers, and statesmen. Considerations of 
this nature are so foreign to most historians that their works afford 
but little aid in our present study. They care little for details, 
which are ' beneath the dignity of history,' and disregard those 
little, precise, and trivial facts which teach us more about a char- 
acter than ten pages of vague phrases. From biographies and 
memoirs we may learn more, though in them little attention is 
bestowed on physiological data. The day will, perhaps, yet come 
when such history will not be so disregarded and so rare, and when 
it will be seen that the infinitesimally small plays, in the evolution 
of humanity, the same latent and incessant part as in the evolution 
of nature. Then history, without neglecting the study of great 
facts and their connection — which is its chief purpose — will furnish 
the psychologist with materials both numerous and precise. Since, 



\ 



io8 Heredity, 



in the absence of such works, our researches would necessarily be 
long, tedious, and often without result, all that we have been able 
to do here is to indicate roughly the part of heredity in history, as 
a physiological and psychological law. We have had to content 
ourselves with showing its existence, for we have no means of 
telling, save in a vague way, in what measure a given quality has 
descended from one generation to another, whether it has varied, 
or why it has varied. 

We have now to treat of the influence of heredity, not on indi- 
viduals, but on masses. We shall seejhow it transmits and fixes 
certain psychological characters in a people as in a family. 

The habit of our times is to regard the State as an organism. 
Herbert Spencer has even shown that this simile holds good at 
every point ; that there is in nature a hierarchical series of organ- 
isms parallel to the hierarchical series of states, the one from the 
protozoon to man, the other from the savage tribes of Australia to 
the most highly civilized nations of Europe; and that in the 
organism, as in the State, progress consists in division of labour, 
and in the increasing complexity of functions. The organism 
subsists only by a continual assimilation and disassimilation of 
molecules : the State by continual gain and loss of individuals. 
But amid this incessant whirl, which constitutes their life, there is 
ever something fixed, which is the basis of their unity and their 
identity. In a people, that sum of psychical characteristics which 
is found throughout its whole history, in all its institutions, and at 
every period, is called the national character. 

The national character is the ultimate explanation, and the only 
true one, of the virtues and vices of a people, of its good or bad 
fortune. This truth, simple though it is, is hardly yet recognized. 
The successes and reverses of a people do not depend on their form 
of government, but are the effect of their institutions. Their 
institutions are the effect of their manners and their creeds; their 
manners and creeds are the effect of their character. If one 
people is industrious, another indolent ; if the one has an internal, 
moral religion, and the other an external, sensuous religion, the 
cause is to be looked for in their habitual mode of thinking and 
feeling — that is to say, in their character. Nor can it be seriously 
doubted that character itself is also an effect. It is extremely 



Heredity and National Character. 109 

probable that every character, individual or national, is the very 
complex result of physiological and psychological laws. But 
sociology is a science so little advanced that we dare not risk a 
judgment on the causes of the formation of national characters, 
and hence we must provisionally regard character as an ultimate 
cause. On this basis, let us see what part is played by heredity in 
the formation of national character. 

It is usual to explain the history of a people by their institu- 
tions, which, in one sense, is true, though institutions themselves 
are but an effect. In the social and political order, effects and 
causes are not presented under the form of a simple series, as in 
the physical order ; we rather find a reciprocity of action between 
them. The character produces the institutions, and they in turn 
form the character; thus, after several generations, the two are but 
one, the institutions are but the character rendered visible and 
permanent. Still, we must not forget that the institutions are only 
an external cause, which is sustained by an internal cause — cha- 
racter — and this is transmitted hereditarily. Take a people in its 
earliest period — the Romans under the kings, or the Gauls before 
Caesar's time — the grand outlines of its character are already 
traced. They are probably the result of its physical constitution, 
and of the climate. And as a people is perpetuated by genera- 
tion ; as it is a law of nature that like shall produce like \ as the 
exceptions to this law tend to disappear when large masses instead 
of particular cases are examined, obvious facts point out how 
national character is preserved by heredity. 

This is, after all, only to assert that physical transmission is as 
much the law for obscure individuals as for famous men. In the 
preceding chapters we have taken our examples from history, 
because such examples are known to all. But every one is aware 
that the various modes of imagination, intelligence, and sensibility 
may be preserved by heredity in ordinary, obscure families. Every 
one might readily find in his own experience instances to confirm 
this. The permanence of national character is at once the result 
and the experimental proof of psychological heredity in the 
masses. 

If we had any true science of ethnographical psychology, we 
should more clearly perceive the part played by heredity in the 



no Heredity. 



formation of the character of a people. Such a science may one 
day exist ; at present we have but fragments. In France. M. Taine 
has based on the law of heredity his studies on the literature, the 
constitution, and the manners of England, considered as an 
expression of national character — he has shown how firmly the old 
Germanic and Scandinavian groundwork was established, and sees 
in Lord Byron a true descendant of the Berserkers. 

In Germany, Lazarus and Steinthal have laid* the foundation for 
a psychology of nations, 'of which the object is to determine the 
nature of the mind of a people, and to discover the laws which 
govern its internal, intellectual, or ideal activity in life, in art, and 
in science.' 1 Even in the absence of such scientific researches, 
based on exact criticism, historians have long been accustomed to 
express decided judgments upon national character, and the 
impossibility of altering it. Thus, the French of the 19th century 
are, in fact, the Gauls described by Caesar. In the Commentaries, in 
Strabo, and in Diodorus Siculus we find all the essential traits of 
our national character : love of arms, taste for everything that 
glitters, extreme levity of mind, incurable vanity, address, great 
readiness of speech, and disposition to be carried away by 
phrases. There are in Caesar some observations which might have 
been written yesterday. ' The Gauls,' says he, ' have a love of 
revolution ; they allow themselves to be led by false reports into 
acts they afterwards regret, and into decisions on the most im- 
portant events ; they are depressed by reverses ; they are as ready 
to go to war without cause as they are weak and powerless in 
the hour of defeat.' 2 

But it is, perhaps, among that people which has borne succes- 
sively the names of Ancient Greeks, Byzantines, and Modern 
Greeks that we must look for the most striking instance of the 
tenacity of character. ' Amid all these vicissitudes,' says Ampere, 
1 the fundamental character of the Greek has not changed ; he has 
now the same qualities, the same defects, 4 as of old.' Pougueville 
found in the Morea Apelles's and Phidias's models; and, what is 

1 Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, band i. 

2 Caesar, De Bello Gallico, iv. 5. See also Strabo, iv. 4. Diodorus Siculus, 
v. ; Michelet and H. Martin, tome i. ; and Carlyle, French Revolution, 
"V 7 ol ii. book iii. ch. 2. 



Heredity and National Character. 1 1 1 

of more interest to us, he shows that the chief traits of the national 
character and habits have been transmitted ; thus, the Arcadians 
still lead a pastoral life, and the inhabitants of Sparta, their neigh- 
bours, have a love for fighting, and an excitable, quarrelsome tem- 
per. In the middle ages the Byzantine possessed all the essential 
characteristics of his ancestors. 

If the reader will examine with us the ponderous, but scarce 
known, volumes of the histories of the Lower Empire, he will find 
that this people which called itself Roman 1 remained thoroughly- 
Greek, notwithstanding their Latin traditions, their imperial 
routine, their manners imported from the East — such as eunuchs, 
the dress and worship of the emperor, etc. — and their narrow 
Christianity. There is here a curious study in historical psycho- 
logy which we would one day willingly attempt. From the Greek 
the Byzantine derived, besides language and literary traditions, a 
subtlety which, for want of mental force to strengthen it, degener- 
ated into low cunning. The love of the Greek for rhetoric and 
brilliant conversation became the braggart self-assertion of the 
Byzantine ; the subtle sophistry of the philosophers degenerated 
into the empty scholasticism of the theologians; and the versatility 
of the Grceculus into the perfidious diplomacy of the Emperors. 
The Byzantine is the Greek of Pericles' time, but in a dry and 
withered old age. 

Similar observations might be made on any nation whatsoever, 
but it is enough to direct the reader's attention to this subject. 
To sum up, every people has its own physiognomy, and this results 
(i) from certain primary characteristics, considered here as final 
causes ; (2) from external conditions, or the influences of cir- 
cumstances ; (3) from heredity, which maintains the primitive 
characteristics. To this last factor, so often overlooked, we will 
now attend. 

11. 

It 1 may be further observed that crossings and alliances take 
place between different nations — to their advantage, say some, 
to their great disadvantage, say others. This, at least, is certain, 
that such intermingling of blood must, to some extent, modify 

1 'Oi PcojuaTot : so the Byzantines always designated themselves. 



112 



Heredity. 



the national character, which remains intact where there is no 
such intermixture. But there are very few nations indeed that 
have been able to survive and gain civilization without fusion with 
others. Though it has been held that the superior races are those 
which have ever been exclusive — a proposition which we will 
hereafter examine in detail — still it is difficult to see how, under 
such conditions, a people could acquire that variety and that 
complexity of elements without which civilization is impossible. 
A great, simple civilization is a contradiction in terms, so that 
we have but little chance of reaching a conclusion. One of two 
things must always take place : either a people remains intact, 
and then its development is inconsiderable \ or it develops only 
by intermingling with other races. 

Yet, after having spoken of nations among whom the primitive 
national character, in its struggle with foreign elements, must have 
been in some degree modified, we turn to some which have been 
at least relatively exclusive. Were China better known, that 
country would probably offer a curious subject of study. We 
take for examples the Jews, the Gypsies, and the Cagots. 

THE JEWS. 

The Jewish people is, perhaps, the only one that has played a 
part in history, while jealously guarding its purity of race. It 
is not, however, quite unmixed. From the psychological point of 
view, it is not easy to decide how far its character has been 
modified by Persian doctrines after the Babylonian captivity, by 
Greek and Egyptian manners from Alexander to Philo, and, in 
the middle ages, by the hard condition of its very existence. 
According to Munck, ' the commercial spirit of the modern Jew 
is not a heritage from his ancestors, but the result of the 
oppressions to which they were subjected, and of their exclusion 
from every other trade.' It will, however, be generally admitted 
that, notwithstanding a few physical and moral variations from 
which no living thing is free, the Jewish nation has preserved 
better than any other its distinctive character : in other words,, 
that in them heredity is better seen than elsewhere. 

But when we attempt to determine the physical and moral 
characteristics of this race, not in vague and general phrases, but 



Heredity and National Character. 113 

in definite points, there is considerable difficulty. Here, however, 
are a few. 

The Jews are usually to be distinguished by their black hair and 
beards, their long eyelashes, thick, prominent, arched eyebrows, 
their large, dark, bright eyes, their dark complexion, their strongly 
aquiline noses. In the east there are fair or red Jews : or, as they 
are called, German Jews. They seem to result from a crossing of 
German or Sclavonic races with the original Jews. 1 There are, 
also, black Jews settled in India from time immemorial, who 
possess very many of the physical characters of the Hindus, 
owing to the influence of the climate, of circumstances, and 
perhaps of cross-breeding. Still, they have a remote resemblance 
to the Jews of Europe. Nott and Gliddon, after having studied 
the question profoundly, conclude that 'all Jews possess some 
identical features.' 

According to the statistical tables of France, Algeria, and 
Prussia, it would appear that this race is remarkably long-lived. 2 
In the various countries of Europe they increase more rapidly 
than the Christian populations. Thus, in Germany, twenty-five 
per cent, of Christians die before they are six months old ; twenty- 
five per cent, of Jews before they are twenty-eight years and three 
months \ fifty per cent, of the Christian population die before they 
are twenty-eight, while fifty per cent, of the Jews exceed fifty-three 
years. 

As regards moral qualities, the Jewish race is presented in 
history as possessed of very definite characters, viz. — a pre- 
dominance of sentiment and imagination ; and this it is that has 
given that nature its aptitude for the creation of religion, poetry, 
and music. We need not dwell upon the religious importance of 
a nation from which have sprung Judaism and Christianity, and 
which alone among the nations of antiquity rose to Monotheism. 
Nor can their poetic eminence be called in question, though this 
race has a poetry of its own — passionate, convulsive, abrupt, and 
full of imagery. Though among the Jews we find very few painters 
and sculptors, their aptitude for music is remarkable : no other 

1 Bulletins de la Societi d ' Anthropologic, tome ii. p. 389. 

2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 180. 



H4 Heredity. 



race has given to the world so high a proportion of musicians. 
We need only mention the names of Mendelssohn, Halevy, and 
Meyerbeer. 

On the other hand, they are but ill-endowed with all that relates 
to scientific culture. ' A race incomplete by reason of its very 
simplicity, it has neither plastic art nor rational science, nor 
philosophy, nor political life, nor military organization. The 
Semitic race has never understood civilization in the sense which 
we attach to the word ; no great organized empires, no public 
spirit are found in its womb. The questions of aristocracy, 
democracy, and feudalism, which constitute the whole secret of 
Indo-European history, have no meaning for the Semitic race. 
Their military inferiority is the result of their utter incapacity for 
discipline and organization.' (Renan.) 

To these general considerations may be appended a few more 
precise facts. Heredity seems to have exerted on the Jewish race 
a baleful influence, by sowing the seed of sundry mental disorders, 
the result of intermarriage. The number of Jewish deaf-mutes is 
enormous. Idiocy and mental alienation are also very frequent. 
According to the German statistics, there is one idiot 

In Silesia to 580 Catholics, to 408 Protestants, to 514 Jews. 



In Wurtemburg to 4, 113 


?> 


to 3,207 


?> 


to 3,003 


And one lunatic 










In Bavaria to 908 


i9 


to 967 


a 


to 514 


In Hanover to 528 


J> 


to 641 


79 


to 337 


In Silesia to 1,355 


?> 


to 1,264 


>> 


to 624 


In Wurtemburg to 2,006 


J> 


to 2,028 


?> 


to 1,544 


{Bulletins 


de la Societe d?Antk) 


-opologie, to 




THE 


GYPSIES. 







The Gypsies, called in different countries by the names of 
Bohemians, Zingari, Zigeuner, and Gitanos {Egyptians), afford 
a striking example of the hereditary conservation of certain 
psychological characteristics. 

According to Pasquier, they first appeared at Paris in 1427. 
Accused of palmistry and sorcery, they were excommunicated, 
expelled the country, threatened with death and the galleys. At 
present Gypsies are to be found in most European countries. 
In Turkey and in Hungary they are smiths, tinkers, musicians. 



Heredity and National Character, 115 

In England they are tinkers and horse-dealers. In Transylvania,. 
Moldavia, and Wallachia, they have their own chiefs, and enjoy 
a fair share of the comforts of life. In Russia there are some 
Gypsies that are rich and respected. But the classic land of the 
Gypsies is Spain. Seville, Cordova, the caves of Monte Sagro, 
near Grenada, and the forests of Andalusia, the cellars and attics 
of Madrid, swarm with them. They live in squalid huts, surrounded 
by all the paraphernalia of sorcery, and their only business is 
thieving, dancing, and fortune-telling. An English missionary, Mr. 
Borrow, who succeeded in overcoming their abhorrence of all 
Christians, who lived with them and spoke their language, has 
given us valuable particulars as to their habits and usages. 1 

It is generally believed that the Gypsies are of Hindu origin ; 
that they may have passed through Egypt, but do not spring from 
it ; that they were a despised caste, probably expelled from India, 
unless, indeed, they left it after the conquest of Tamerlane. Their 
true and sacred name is RomL c All the world over/ says Borrow, 
6 their usages are the same, and they employ the same words. 7 
When we compare sundry terms of their idiom with the corre- 
sponding Sanscrit words (especially those denoting number), the 
analogy is striking. 

Undoubtedly the physical and mental constitution of Gypsies 
is the same in all countries. It is, no doubt, somewhat difficult to 
'-decide how much is due to education, that is to say, to tradition ; 
and how much to heredity. To the latter, however, these facts 
seem due. 

As regards physical constitution, Borrow finds in all Gypsies 
hard, sharp features, jet black hair, fine, white teeth, bright eyes, 
and the ' fascinating ' glance. 

As regards their intellect, they appear to be as thoughtless and 
frivolous as children. 'Nothing makes a lasting impression on 
the Gypsy's mind ; it is as restless as running water, and reflects 
all images alike. The Gypsy believes everything and nothing, 
or, rather, believes only in the sensation of the moment; a 
sensation that is past is for him only a fable. Hence he is 
sceptical, not only as regards moral and social ideas, but even with 

1 An Account of the Gypsies of Spain. By G. Borrow. 



1 1 6 Hei r edity. 



regard to his own impressions. He abandons himself to a 
blind trust in fleeting emotions, just as, in the ordinary course of 
life, he gives himself up to all the chances of vagabondage. One 
impression is driven out by another. In him simple animalism is 
supreme. Emotions — of whatever kind, gross or poetical, grovel- 
ling or exalted — are the rule, and, as it were, the motive power of 
his mind.' Their poetry, specimens of which Borrow gives, is 
prosaic, rude, vulgar, and childish rather than artless. 

As their mind, so their manners : with childish ideas they have 
a childish morality. If children had a morality of their own, it 
would be a very bad morality. Hobbes was right when he said i 
Homo malus, fiuer robustus. What specially characterizes the 
Gypsy is his love, his inborn need, of vagabondage, and an 
adventurous life. He abhors civilization as slavery, and despises 
all sedentary and regular occupation. Marriage is but a temporary 
union, concluded in presence of a few members of the tribe. 
Gypsies usually live organized into corporations or tribes, under 
the authority of an elective chief — a very primitive form of polity. 
Hating, as they do, all civilized peoples, they have certain vices to 
which they cling as to an hereditary creed, and these they love and 
uphold as a religion. Thus, their highest ambition is to steal from 
the Christians ; and mothers teach their children thieving as the 
noblest of virtues. They are, moreover, like children, less violent 
than tricky, incapable of lofty thoughts, and unaffected in their 
superstitions. Borrow having translated into Romany the 
Gospel according to St. Luke, the Gypsies accepted the book, 
and, regarding it as a talisman, carried it about their persons when 
they went to thieve. 

This race offers a curious instance of a native incapacity, pre- 
served and transmitted by heredity, for adaptation to civilized life. 
The Gypsies are in our moral and social world what the dodo and 
the ornithorhynchus are in our physical world, the survivors of a 
past age. Civilization is a very complex condition, a moral atmo- 
sphere to which man has to become acclimatized. There must be 
a correspondence between the moral man and his moral condi- 
tions, as between the physical man and his physical conditions. 
Whoever cannot adapt himself to new conditions of social life 
must die out — gradually, perhaps, yet surely. If he disappears 



Heredity and National Character. 117 



but slowly, he remains only as a curious and useless thing, 
picturesque to an artistic eye ; but he is ill adapted to his circum- 
stances, and certain sooner or later to vanish. 

THE CAGOTS. 

The various names of Cagots, Agots, Capots, Gahets, and 
Caqueux, are given to races which subsisted down to the present 
century in Guyenne, Gascony, and Beam, on the northern side of 
the Pyrenees, in Navarre and Guipuzcoa, and even in Maine and 
Brittany. 1 They formed a population apart, separated from the 
other inhabitants by the aversion with which it was regarded. 
Popular tradition confounded these people with lepers. It was 
said that they might be distinguished by their dull-gray eyes, and 
by the shortness of the lobe of the ear. 'They are/ says an 
author of the 1 6th century, ' comely men, industrious, skilful 
mechanics ; but in their countenances and in their acts you always 
detect something that makes them worthy of all the abhorrence 
wherewith they are universally regarded. Furthermore, be they as 
comely as they may, they have all, men and women alike, a stink- 
ing breath, and when you come near one of them you experience 
a certain unpleasant odour emanating from their flesh, as though 
some curse descending from father to son had fallen upon this 
miserable race of men.' 

Though, like the population amid which they lived, they were 
Catholics, still they were not allowed to mix with their co- 
religionists. Their hovels stood at some little distance outside 
the villages ; they could enter the parish church only through a 
narrow doorway exclusively reserved for them • they took the holy 
water from a special stoup, or received it from the point of a stick ■ 
and in the church they had a corner where they were obliged to 



1 During the Reign of Terror there were yet to be found many of the 
Caqueux in Finistere. M. Francisque Michel states that in a commune of the 
•canton of Accous, arrondissement of Oleron, a Cagot was, about the year 
181 7, nominated for maire of the commune, to the great scandal of the people 
of the place. Protests were sent in from all sides to the prefet, but he did not 
heed them. Still the complaints did not cease, they continued to be made till 
1830, when the electors forced the maire to retire into his former privacy. 
— Histoire des Races Maudites, i. 127. 



1 1 8 Heredity. 



keep apart from the rest of the faithful. Down to the end of the 
17th century they were required by the legislation then in force 
to wear a distinctive mark, called ' the goose's foot/ or i the 
duck's foot ' {pied doie, pied de canard) in the decrees of the par- 
liaments of Navarre and of Bordeaux. 

Of course these outcasts intermarried, as a general rule, and 
marriages between Cagot families held to be 'pure' were very 
rare. Hence this race remained under much the same conditions 
as the Jews — in a state highly favourable to hereditary transmis- 
sion. It is to be observed that many of those who have spoken of 
these Cagots from personal observation, and particularly the 
physicians of the 16th and 17th century, whose remarks are given 
in M. Michel's work, noticed the fact of heredity. On the other 
hand, the same author tells us that a modern writer says, ' I dis- 
trust external signs as means of distinguishing Cagots from people 
of other races.' Perhaps these opinions might be reconciled, if 
we observe that the Cagots do not appear to have been a race 
strictly distinct, like the Jews and the Gypsies. While the origin 
of the last-named races is known, that of the Cagots is ex- 
tremely obscure. All sorts of conjectures have been made, 
ranging from the one which would have them to be the descend- 
ants of a servant of the prophet Elijah, down to that which sees 
in them a remnant of the Goths. 1 If, then, between the Cagots 
and the surrounding population there were no diversity of race, all 
external differences would gradually disappear under the influence 
of identical conditions. 

Still, during their pariah period the Cagots would have been a 
curious object of study from the standpoint of psychological and 
moral heredity. But unfortunately the data are totally wanting. 
We only know that in Guyenne and in Gascony they were all 
coopers or carpenters; and that in Brittany they were all rope- 
makers ; and were considered very expert in their trade. But this 
fact seems to us to be far less the result of heredity than of the 
caste-rule to which they were subjected. They were accused of 
being presumptuous, arrogant, braggart— defects which may be 
explained as well by the attitude of permanent hostility in which 



1 Races Maudites, i. 266. 



Morbid Psychological Heredity. 119 

they stood with regard to all other men, as by the organic trans- 
mission of quality. There is one simple fact, insignificant enough 
in itself, respecting an hereditary taste and talent for music : 'Navar- 
reins has seen the Campagnets hand down through three or four 
generations a highly prized violin. No holiday was happily spent 
where the violin or the flute of the Campagnets did not contribute 
to the mirth/ 2 



CHAPTER IX. 

MORBID PSYCHOLOGICAL HEREDITY. 



At the commencement of this work, in the introduction 
devoted to physiological heredity, we showed briefly that diseases 
are transmissible, like all the characteristics of the external or 
internal structure, and all the various modes of the organization in 
a normal state. The same question now arises in the psychologi- 
cal order. Are the modes of mental life transmissible under their 
morbid, as they are under their normal form ? Does the study of 
mental diseases contribute its quota of facts in favour of heredity? 
The answer must be in the affirmative. The transmission of all 
kinds of psychological anomalies — whether of passions and crimes, 
of which we have already spoken, or of hallucinations and insanity, 
of which we are next to speak — is so frequent, and evidenced by 
such striking facts, that the most inattentive observers have been 
struck by it, and that morbid psychological heredity is admitted 
even by those who have no suspicion that this is only one aspect 
of a law which is far more general. 

In considering hereafter the direct causes of mental heredity, 
we shall endeavour to establish this important proposition : that 
in man, to every psychological state whatsoever, corresponds 
a determinate physiological state, and vice versa. Here this 
question is presented incidentally, for it has been much debated 
whether mental diseases have or have not an organic cause. 

1 Ibid. i. 41. 



120 Heredity. 



If we restrict ourselves to palpable, visible, demonstrated, and 
accepted facts, we meet with two sorts of cases : those in which 
disorders of the intellect have corresponding to them evident 
changes of the tissue of the nerve-centres, and those in which the 
brain presents no appreciable degeneration. 

Taking their stand on facts of the second of these categories, 
some writers on insanity, of whom the most celebrated is Leuret, 
have held that insanity may proceed from purely psychological 
causes. ' PhysiologMJkays he, ' pathology, acquaintance with the 
facts and the laws offnought and of passion, clinical and micro- 
scopic observations, therapeutical experiments — all concur to 
negative the absolute proposition that insanity always and 
necessarily has its rise in an affection of the organs. While 
everything contributes to bestow the character of evidence upon 
the following definition of insanity : ' Insanity consists in the 
aberration of the understanding . . . and the causes that produce 
it mostly belong to an order of phenomena that have nothing to 
do with the laws of matter.' Notwithstanding these categorical 
affirmations, Leuret's view finds daily fewer adherents. The 
reason of this is, that it really rests only on our ignorance and 
impotence. It simply affirms that in many cases there exists no 
physical cause, since we discern none. But beyond the limits 
that cannot be passed by the microscope, there exist phenomena 
which, though inappreciable to our senses, are nevertheless 
material. Electricity, magnetism, and all the various physical 
and chemical agencies, produce in our inmost organs molecular 
changes which elude our methods of investigation, but of which 
the consequences may be fatal. Moreover, the idea of a mental 
disease independent of all organic cause is a theory so unintel- 
ligible that the Spiritualists themselves have rejected it, and it is 
now generally admitted that the cause of madness is always to be 
found in a diseased state of the organs : insanity, like other 
maladies, is a disease physical in its cause, though mental as 
regards most of its symptoms. 1 



1 See Lemoine, VAliene, p. 105—137. The hypothesis of purely psycho- 
logical causes of insanity led Heinroth to pen the following absurdities which 
are worth quoting : — 

' Insanity is the loss of moral freedom ; it never depends on a physical cause ; 



Morbid Psychological Heredity. 121 

Since the direct cause of insanity is some morbid affection of 
.the nervous system, and as every part of the organism is trans- 
missible, clearly the heredity of mental affections is the rule. It 
makes little difference whether we regard thought as simply a 
function of the nervous system, or the nervous system as a simple 
condition of thought. Our experimental psychology, which deals 
only with facts, remands to metaphysics all researches into first 
causes. The metamorphoses of heredity arel still more perplex- 
ing. Nervous disorders are often transform e&jm their transmission. 
Convulsions in the progenitors may change to hysteria or to 
epilepsy in the descendants. A case is cited where hyperesthesia 
in the father branched out in the grandchildren into the various 
forms of monomania, mania, hypochondria, hysteria, epilepsy, 
convulsions, spasms. Facts of this kind are very numerous. To 
confine ourselves to psychological metamorphoses, nothing is more 
frequent than to see simple insanity become suicidal mania, or 
suicidal mania become simple insanity, alcoholism, or hypo- 
chondria. ' A goldsmith, who had been cured of a first attack of 
insanity,"caused by the revolution of 1789, took poison; later, his 
eldest daughter was seized with an attack of mania, passing into 
dementia. One of her brothers stabbed himself in the stomach 
with a knife. A second brother gave himself up to drunkenness, 
and ended his career by dying in the streets. A third, owing to 
domestic annoyances, refused all food, and died of anaemia. 
Another daughter, a woman of most capricious temper, married, 
and had a son and daughter : the former died insane and epileptic ; 
the latter lost her mind during her lying in, became hypochondriac, 
and wished to starve herself to death. Two children of this same 
woman died of brain fever, and a third would never take the 
breast/ 1 This is one of the most instructive cases we have. 

it is not a disease of the body, but a disease of the mind, a sin. It neither is, 
nor can be hereditary, because the thinking ego, the soul, is not hereditary. 
What is transmissible by way of generation is temperament and constitution, 
and against these he must react whose parents were insane, if he would not 
himself become lunatic. The man who, during his whole life, has before his 
eyes and in his heart the image of God, need never fear that he will lose his 
wits/ etc. 

1 Piorry, De V Heredite dans les Maladies, p. 169. See also Maudsley, 
Pathology of Mind, 244 — 256. 



122 Heredity. 



There are others of a more obscure nature, which give us a 
glimpse of the curious relations between talent and insanity. 
Long before Moreau of Tours' celebrated thesis in regard to 
genius, Gintrac had noticed the following fact : a father touched 
with insanity had able sons, who filled public situations with dis- 
tinction. Their children appeared at first sensible, but at the age 
of twenty became insane. In twenty-two cases of hereditary in- 
sanity, Aubanel and Thore have noticed two facts of this kind. 

Deferring, for a while, the difficult question of the metamorphoses 
of heredity, we here give only similar, and, consequently, the most 
indisputable, cases, and they also are the most frequent. There 
are families the members of which, with few exceptions, are all 
subject to the same kind of insanity. Three relations were placed 
at the same time in a lunatic asylum at Philadelphia. In a Con- 
necticut asylum there was once a lunatic the eleventh in his 
family. Lucas mentions a lady who was the eighth. More curious 
still, this infirmity often appears at the same period of life in suc- 
cessive generations. All the scions of a noble family at Hamburg, 
distinguished through four generations for great military talents, 
went mad at the age of forty : there remained but one member, a 
soldier like his father, and he was, by decree of the senate, forbidden 
to marry • the critical period came, and he also went mad. (Lucas.) 
A Swiss merchant saw two of his children die insane both at the 
age of nineteen. A lady went mad at the age of twenty-five after 
childbirth; her daughter became insane at the same age, also after 
childbirth. In one family the father, son, and grandson committed 
suicide at about the age of fifty. (Esquirol.) 

ii. 

We now proceed to show from examples that the chief varieties 
of mental malady are transmissible. In the absence of any 
universally accepted classification, we group our facts under the 
following heads : Hallucination, Monomania, Suicide, Mania, 
Dementia, Idiocy. 

Hallucination assumes two principal forms. Sometimes it results 
from the automatic action of the nerve-centres, and is compatible 
with perfect reason; hallucination in this case does not imply 
error of judgment: it is recognized as an illusion, nor is the subject 



Morbid Psychological Heredity. 12^ 



j 



of the hallucination at all deceived. In the other case, the hallucina- 
tion is complete, and then the patient believes in the objective 
reality of his imaginary perceptions, and acts accordingly. Under 
this form, hallucination is one of the first symptoms of insanity. 
It is hereditary in both shapes. 

1 We cannot establish by statistics, 7 says the author of one of the 
best treatises on this subject, 'the power of heredity on hallucina- 
tions, because they almost always exist with insanity. In order to 
thoroughly appreciate this influence, it should be studied in indi- 
viduals who have only simple hallucinations, and in those mono- 
maniacs, subject to hallucination, who have a very decided form of 
insanity. It is undeniable that they often occur in the sons of 
those who have presented this double condition. 

'The father of Jerome Cardan used to see apparitions ; so also 
did his son. Catherine de Medicis had an hallucination, as Pierre 
de TEstoile relates ; and her son, Charles IX., had one the very 
night of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. ' x 

Abercrombie cites a case of hereditary hallucination where the 
reason remained intact. ' I know a man/ says he, 6 who all his 
life has been subject to hallucination. This disposition is of such 
a nature that if he meets a friend in the street, he cannot tell at 
once whether it is an actual person or a phantasm. By dint of 
attention he can make out a difference between the two. Usually 
he connects the visual impressions by touch, or by listening for 
the footfalls. This man is in the flower of his age, of sound mind, 
in good health, and engaged in business. Another member of 
his family has had the same affection, though in a less degree.' 

Here is a case no less curious. A young man of eighteen, 
neither enthusiastic, nor superstitious, nor fanciful, lived at Rams- 
gate. Happening one evening to enter a village church, he was 
terror-stricken at seeing the ghost of his mother, who had died 
some months before. Having witnessed this same apparition many 
times, he fell sick, and returned to Paris, where his father lived. 
He did not venture to speak to him of this apparition. 

Being obliged to sleep in the same room as his father, he was 
surprised on seeing that, contrary to his former habit, the latter 

1 Brierre.de Boismont, Dcs Hallucinations, p. 431. 



124 Heredity. 



always kept a light burning through the night. As this trouble- 
some light prevented, the son from sleeping, he put it out one 
night, but his father, much agitated, bade him light it again. 

At length the young man went to visit a younger brother, who 
was at school in a small town some fifty miles from Paris. The 
schoolmaster's son said to him, almost at once : ' Has your brother 
ever given any signs of insanity ? Last night he came downstairs 
in his shirt, quite beside himself, declaring that he had seen his 
mother's ghost/ Y 

This fact can only be explained by supposing that the sons 
derived from their father a tendency to hallucination under the 
influence of their deep regret for their loss. 

A man in the Lyons hospital was subject simultaneously to 
hallucinations of taste and smell \ tormented by disgusting odours 
and tastes, he spent whole hours in blowing his nose and spitting. 
His father had died in the same hospital from the effects of mania 
with hallucination. 

We might also cite the famous Seeress of Prevorst, Frederika 
HaufTe, whose life, together with a collection of her visions, was 
edited by Kerner. This faculty of ' talking with the spirits ' was 
shared by most of the members of the HaufTe family. Her 
brother, in particular, possessed this gift, but in a lower degree, and 
without the complication of the phenomena of ecstasy and cata- 
lepsy which characterized the seeress. 2 

in. 

Among the morbid psychological affections to which Esquirol 
gave the name of monomania, there is none the heredity of which 
is better proved than that of suicide. Voltaire was among the 
first to call the attention of physicians to this subject. 

' I have with my own eyes/ he writes, ' seen a suicide that is 
worthy of the attention of physicians. A thoughtful professional 
man, of mature age, of regular habits, having no strong passions, 
and beyond the reach of want, committed suicide on the 17th of 
October, 1769, leaving behind him, addressed to the council of his 

1 Brierre de Boismont, Des Hallucinations, p. 57. 

2 Lucas, ii. 769. 



Morbid Psychological Heredity. 125 

native city, an apology for his voluntary death, which it was not 
thought advisable to publish, lest men should be encouraged to 
quit a life whereof so much evil is spoken. So far there is nothing 
extraordinary, since instances of this kind are everywhere to be 
found ; but here is the astonishing feature of the case : — 

6 His father and his brother had committed suicide at the same 
age as himself. What hidden disposition of mind, what sympathy,, 
what concurrence of physical laws, caused this father and his two 
sons to perish by their own hand and by the same fonn of death, 
just when they have attained the same year of their age ? ' 1 

Since Voltaire's day, the history of mental disease has registered 
a great number of similar facts. They abound in Gall, Esquirol, 
Moreau of Tours, and in all the writers on insanity. Esquirol 
knew a family in which the grandmother, mother, daughter, and 
grandson committed suicide. ' A father of taciturn disposition/ 
says Falret, ' had five sons. The eldest, at the age of forty, threw 
himself out of a third story window; the second strangled himself 
at the age of thirty-five ; the third threw himself out of a window ; 
the fourth shot himself; a cousin of theirs drowned himself for a 
trifling cause. In the Oroten family, the oldest in Teneriffe, two 
sisters were affected with suicidal mania, and their brother, grand- 
father, and two uncles put an end to their own lives. 2 One of the 
most singular combinations of related suicides on record is this : 

' D , son and nephew of suicides, married a woman who was 

daughter and niece to suicides. He hanged himself, and his wife 
married a second husband who was son, nephew, and first-cousin 
of suicides.' 

The point which excited Voltaire's surprise, viz. the heredity of 

suicide at a definite age, has been often noticed. ' M. L , a 

monomaniac,' says Moreau of Tours, ' put an end to his life at the 
age of thirty. His son had hardly attained the same age when he 
was attacked with the same monomania, and made two attempts 
at suicide. Another man, in the prime of life, fell into a melan- 
choly state and drowned himself; his son, of good constitution, 



1 Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosofihiquc, Art. * Caton. ? 

2 Annales Medic o-Psyc hoi ogiques, 1844. Several other facts will be found in 
Lucas, ii. 780, and in Moreau, Psychologie Morbide, 171 — 174. 



126 Heredity. 



wealthy, and father of two gifted children, drowned himself at the 
same age. A wine-taster who had made a mistake as to the quality 
of a wine, threw himself into the water in a fit of desperation. He 
was rescued, but afterwards accomplished his purpose. The 
physician who had attended him ascertained that this man's father 
and one of his brothers had committed suicide at the same age 
and in the same way.' 

This identity of the manner of suicide is another point worthy 
of notice, as tending to show the automatic character of the 
heredity. We have given several cases in point, and the data with 
regard to this matter show that the same manner of death is often 
traditional in a family : some drown, others hang, or strangle them- 
selves, others throw themselves out of window. 

With suicidal may be ranked homicidal monomania, of which we 
have already spoken under the head of passions, and which is also 
hereditary. We need here give only one instance of this form of 
morbid heredity, but it is one that by itself is more convincing 
than a host of others. We take it from the Annates de Hencke, 
1821. 

A woman named Olhaven fell ill of a serious disorder, which 
obliged her to wean her daughter, six weeks old. This complaint 
of the mother began by an irresistible desire to kill her child. 
This purpose was discovered in season to prevent it. She was 
next seized with a violent fever, which utterly blotted the fact from 
her memory, and she afterwards proved a most devoted mother to 
her daughter. 

This daughter, become a mother in her turn, took two children 
to nurse. For some days she had suffered from fatigue and from 
4 movements, in the stomach/ when one evening as she was in her 
room with the infants, one of them on her lap, she was suddenly 
seized by a strong desire to cut its throat. Alarmed by this 
horrible temptation, she ran from the spot with the knife in her 
hand, and sought in singing, dancing, and sleep, a refuge from the 
thoughts that haunted her. Hardly had she fallen asleep, when 
she started up, her mind filled with the same idea, which now was 
irresistible. She was, however, controlled, and in a measure 
calmed. The homicidal delirium recurred, and finally gave way, 
only after many remedies had been employed. 



Morbid Psychological Heredity. 127 

A form of monomania which has now disappeared, but which 
was in a highly flourishing state three hundred years ago, is the 
monomania of possession, or dsemonomania. In our day, the 
narratives of demoniacal possession read like dreams ; but in the 
times when they had a place outside of the world of fiction, when 
they were a cruel and absurd reality, and when possession was a 
crime having its tribunals, its code of procedure, and its punish- 
ments, this mental affection, then qualified as supernatural, was 
transmitted by heredity. 

Writers on possession are unanimously of opinion that from 
generation to generation the members of a family were bound 
to the devil, or were sorcerers. Two high authorities on the 
question — Bodin, in his Demonologie, and Sprenger, in his 
Malleus Maleficorwn — lay down this principle as a rule that has 
no exception. Bodin says : ' When the father or mother is a 
sorcerer, the sons and daughters are sorcerers.' Sprenger says 
that the accused must always be carefully questioned, ' si ex con- 
sanguinitate sua aliqui, propter maleficia, fuissent duduni incinerate 
vd suspecti habitij for witchcraft commonly infects the whole race. 
The accused were themselves the first to admit this. 

In our times, persons who think themselves possessed are 
merely sent to a lunatic asylum, and sometimes several members 
of one family will be found there affected with this form of mono- 
mania. A mother and her daughter believed themselves to be 
under the special protection of spirits, which they called Airs. A 

lady of B believed herself to be a fantastic being whom she 

called Solomon, and who was, for her, the Genius of Evil, and 
the author of all her torments. Her father attributed to a sylph 
named Stratageme everything that happened to him. 1 

With daemonomania may be classed the epidemic chorese of 
the middle ages, which, according to mediaeval authors, were 
hereditary in some families. So, too, with the convulsionaries of 
the seventeenth century : during the epidemic of ecstasy mingled 
with convulsions, which broke out among the Protestants of the 
Cevennes, children of four or five years, and even of eighteen 
months, were affected with the prevailing disorder. Sympathy 

1 Moreau, Psychologie Morbide, 171. 



128 Heredity. 



and nervous contagion certainly contributed to produce this 
phenomenon, but there is no doubt that it is to be in a great 
measure referred to heredity. 

Another mental affection, known as melancholia and lypemania, 
by some authors identified with hypochondria, but by others held 
to be a distinct complaint, though it much resembles it in its 
psychological effects, while differing in its organic causes, is also 
hereditary. ' Lypemania,' says Esquirol, 'is most commonly 
hereditary; lypemaniacs are born with a particular temperament, 
the melancholic, and this predisposes them to lypemania.' 

Cases are on record of families, all of whose members are 
tormented with the fixed idea that people want to murder them 
or poison them. A woman affected with lypemania was sent, at 
the age of forty-two, to an asylum, and there died. It was dis- 
covered that her grandfather and her mother had been insane; 
and her son, barely fifteen years of age, already gave signs of 
lypemania. 1 In 482 cases of this disorder, Esquirol found no to 
be hereditary. 

With this form of morbid heredity we may couple the heredity 
of presentiments. The following curious case is taken from 
Brierre de Boismont. If we accept the anecdote as true, we 
must, says Dr. Delasiauve, recognize the principal cause of the 
phenomena in the heredity of a nervous affection. 

' Marshal de Soubise related, in presence of Louis XIV., that as 
he was one day conversing in his cabinet with an English lady, he 
all at once heard the lady utter a shriek, and saw her rise to go 
away and fall unconscious at his feet ; this without any external 
cause. Filled with surprise and concern, the Duke de Soubise 
rang the bell. The servants ran in and attended on the fainting 
lady, who soon came to herself. " Do not detain me," she said to 
the Marshal, excitedly ; " I shall scarcely have time to put my 
affairs in order before I die." 

' She then told M. de Soubise that both sides of her family had 
the gift of divination : every member of it had been able to name 
the very hour of their deaths a month beforehand. She added 



1 Gazette des Hofiitaiix, 19 October, 1844. See also Moreau, 192 ; 
Maudsley, 376. 



Morbid Psychological Heredity. 129 

that, in the midst of the conversation she had held with M. de 
Soubise, her own double had appeared to her in the mirror before 
her. She saw herself wrapped in a shroud, over which was a black 
cloth sprinkled with white tears : at her feet was an open coffin. 

' A month after this occurrence, M. de Soubise received a letter 
informing him that this mysterious premonition had been proved 
true by the event.' 1 

It is natural to suppose that these sudden visions are due to a 
certain mental constitution hereditarily transmitted : imagination 
does the rest, and on the appointed day brings about the catas- 
trophe, which is thus an effect, not a cause. 

IV. 

Mania consists in a total derangement of the intellectual and 
affective faculties. i The maniac/ says Esquirol, ' only lives in a 
chaos. His wild and menacing purposes show the disordered 
state of his mind ; his actions are mischievous ; he would injure 
or destroy everything ; he is at war with every one. To this 
pitiable state, if the patient does not recover, succeeds a calm that 
is a thousand times more painful to behold : the maniac becomes 
demented ; he drags out stupidly the remnant of material life, 
without thought, without desires, without regrets, sinking gradually 
into death.' ' Chronic mania,' adds the same author, 'is a chronic 
affection of the brain, ordinarily unattended by fever, and charac- 
terized by perturbation and exaltation of sensibility, intellect, and 
will. Maniacs are noted for their illusions and hallucinations, and 
for their faulty associations of ideas, which spring up with extreme 
vivacity, and without any coherence.' 

The heredity of this mental affection is very frequent : according 
to figures collated by Esquirol, about fifty per cent, of the cases 
are hereditary. At the Salpetriere, in 220 cases he found SS 
hereditary; and in his own establishment 75 out of 152 cases 
were hereditary. 

The mental diseases that remain to be considered represent 
the extreme forms of intellectual decay, viz. dementia, general 
paralysis, and idiocy. 



1 Brierre de Boismont, Des Hallucinations, p. 536. 



1 30 Hereaity. 



Dementia and general pai'alysis are the usual, or, at least, the 
possible termination of all kinds of insanity. Hence their 
hereditary transmission does not properly constitute a particular 
case to be considered separately. Sometimes the dementia of 
progenitors is reproduced in the same form and at about the same 
age in the descendants. Esquirol saw it appear at the age of 
twenty-five in a young sculptor, whose family was subject to this 
disease. At other times the simple insanity of parents is meta- 
morphosed, and becomes dementia or general paralysis in the 
children. Thus individuals have been seen, born of parents affected 
with mental diseases, to reach the age of forty or fifty without 
appreciable signs of mental disease, and then fall into dementia 
without any apparent cause, and even contrary to all expectations. 

In idiots and imbeciles the mental activity has suffered such an 
arrest of development that some of them adopt the habits of the 
mere animal. This disease is incurable, since to cure it we should 
have to create a new brain. As Esquirol ingeniously remarks, the 
demented subject is a rich man that has become poor; the idiot, 
a pauper who can never attain to wealth. 

As the sexual appetite is mostly very keen in idiots, the conse- 
quence being an unhappy fertility, it is easy to show the heredity 
of idiocy. Cases of the direct heredity are numerous. Thus, 
Esquirol saw at the Salpetriere an idiot woman, the mother of two 
daughters and a son, all of them idiots. 1 ; But idiocy appears to 
be transmitted rather in the collateral form ; or if in the direct 
line, then it disappears for a generation or two. Haller was the 
first to note this in the case of two noble families in which idiocy 
had appeared one hundred years before, and it was found to 
reappear in the fourth or fifth generation. In our own time, 
Dr. Se'guin, who is a good authority on the question, remarks r 
' I have not, to my knowledge, ever had to attend an idiotic son 
of an idiot, or even the son of a man of weak intellect ; but I have 
often found in the family of one of my pupils an aunt, an uncle, 
or oftener a grandfather afflicted with idiocy, alienation, or, at 
least, imbecility/ 

In conclusion, we could wish that we could answer here two* 



1 Further facts in Lucas, ii. 787. 



Morbid Psychological Heredity. 131 

questions that are unfortunately very obscure. The first is this : 
What rank must we assign to heredity among the causes of 
insanity ? Good statistical documents alone can afford the answer ; 
but the various tables agree but little with one another. Cases of 
hereditary insanity are, according to Moreau of Tours, nine-tenths 
of the whole number; according to other writers they are only 
one-tenth. According to Maudsley they are more than one-fourth, 
but less than half: in 50 cases of insanity carefully examined 
by him, 16 were hereditary, or one-third. In 73 cases given by 
Trelat in his Folie Zucide, 43 are represented as due to heredity. 
From a report made to the French Government in 186 1, it appears 
that in 1000 cases of persons of each sex admitted to asylums, 
264 males and 266 females had inherited the disorder. Of the 
264 males, 128 inherited from the father, no from the mother, 
and 26 from both. Of the 266 females, 100 inherited from the 
father, 130 from the mother, and 36 from both. Hence we should 
hardly be in error were we to say that the cases of hereditary 
insanity represent from one-half to one-third of the total number. 

The second question is this : To what form of mental heredity 
must hereditary insanity be referred? In the first place, as 
regards mere, simple hallucination, it is plain that it is only a form 
of .heredity of the sensorial faculties. As for insanity, properly 
so called, since it assumes every possible shape ; since it presents, 
now separately, now collectively, perversion of the sentiments and 
instincts, loss of intellect, and weakness of will ; and since it has 
never been found possible so far to trace back all the psychological 
phenomena of insanity to one cause, we may affirm that the fore- 
going facts are a fresh demonstration, in extenso, of psychological 
heredity under all its forms. 



PART SECOND. 

THE LAWS. 

Quel monstre est-ce, que cette goutte de semence, de quoy nous sommes 
produicts, porte en soy les impressions, non de la forme corporelle seulement, 
mais des pensements et inclinations de nos peres ? — Montaigne. 



( 135 ) 



CHAPTER I. 

ARE THERE LAWS OF HEREDITY? 
I. 

Science begins only with the investigation of laws. All that pre- 
cedes has one only object, to prepare the way for this investigation. 
Unless we hoped that out of the mass of facts drawn from animal 
and human psychology, from pathology and history, some fixed 
and certain rule would arise, our store of materials were valueless, 
a mere collection of curious anecdotes, which would afford the 
mind nothing like true science. We believe that the facts we have 
cited are not to be thus lightly esteemed. It is the privilege of 
the experimental method — which is so often charged with creeping 
on the ground, with being tied down to facts, and restricted within 
narrow boundaries without a horizon — to reveal to us what is uni- 
versal, to exhibit to us laws in facts, and to demonstrate for us the 
seeming paradox, that in the world for the scientific mind there are 
no facts, but only laws. 

If we take any simple fact of the inorganic world — a stone, a 
liquescent gas, a falling drop of water — and consider these pheno- 
mena, as do people in general, with the eyes and not with the mind, 
they will be a complete reality, and whatever is not visible and 
tangible will be but a vain abstraction. But science analyzes these 
facts into laws of gravity, heat, molecular attraction, affinity, etc., 
secondary laws which may themselves be referred to more general 
laws — and, perceiving that these laws are found everywhere in the 
organic world, science concludes that they it is that are real. 
Group these laws, and we have facts ; group different kinds of laws, 
and we have different kinds of facts. It follows that to know a 
fact thoroughly is to know the quality and the quantity of the laws 
which compose it, to know that a given fact is resolvable into 
given laws of heat, gravity, etc., and into a given amount of heat, 



136 Heredity. 



gravitation, etc. But in this analysis the fact has crumbled away, 
vanished, ceased to be, and has left in its stead nothing but a 
group of laws. 

If we take a biological fact, a flowering plant, a respiratory 
animal, there again we find only a sum of laws. First, there are 
the laws of inorganic matter ; and, indeed, if we reduce life to pure 
mechanism, there are no others. But if, on the contrary, we hold 
that physics and chemistry fail to explain life in its entirety, we 
bring in other laws, those governing assimilation, disintegration, 
generation, and all the vital processes ; and although we have as 
yet no precise knowledge of these laws, we do not doubt that 
they exist. 

So, too, with the moral world. A passion, a poem, a historical 
event, a revolution, result from the grouping of an almost infinite 
number of laws. For, beyond the physical and biologic laws 
which they presuppose, they imply also psychological, economical, 
and social laws. The simplest moral fact presents such a compli- 
cation, such a tangle of laws, themselves but ill-understood, that 
many men, unable to recognize them, have chosen rather to deny 
them. But each new advance of science discredits this solution ; 
and, although it is possible that beyond this general reference to 
law there may exist something which is not subject to it, still we 
may affirm that every fact, considered as such, is a grouping of 
laws. 

Let us suppose all the facts of the physical and moral universe 
reduced to a thousand secondary laws, and these to a dozen 
primitive laws, which are the final and irreducible elements of the 
world ; let us represent each by a thread of peculiar colour, itself 
formed of a collection of finer threads ; a superior force — God, 
Nature, Chance, it matters not what — is ever weaving, knotting and 
unknotting these, and transforming them into various patterns. To 
the ordinary mind there is nothing besides these knots and these 
patterns ; for it these are the only reality — beyond them it knows 
nothing, suspects nothing. But the man of science sets to work : 
he unties the knots, unravels the patterns, and shows that all the 
reality is in the threads. Then the antagonism between fact and 
law disappears ; facts are but a synthesis of laws, laws an analysis 
of facts. 



Are there Laws of Heredity ? 137 

Thus a scientific idea of the world is formed. The experimental 
method appeared to be imprisoned in the raw material of the fact, 
when all at once its range of vision is enlarged, its horizon recedes 
almost immeasurably, to that mysterious limit where the world of 
laws comes to an end ; observation attains to the universal, and 
experience gains the almost idealistic conclusion that facts are but 
appearances, laws the reality. 

11. 

We must now inquire whether, among the many threads the inter- 
weaving of which constitutes the facts we have cited, any one is- 
common to this entire group. To speak more clearly, the ques- 
tion is whether heredity is a law of the moral world, or whether 
the many instances already quoted are only isolated cases resulting 
from the fortuitous concurrence of other laws. 

It may be surprising why, after what has been already said, the 
question is now raised. But the perfect indifference of most 
psychologists with regard to heredity would seem to show that 
they do not recognize in it a psychical law. The doctrines of 
those physiologists who have bestowed more attention on the 
subject are by no means harmonious on this point, and many of 
them have roundly denied moral heredity. It is, therefore, im- 
portant that the question should be studied. To speak frankly,, 
the objections brought against psychological heredity do not 
appear to be very formidable; they would, indeed, be often 
inexplicable, did we not know the motive which has inspired 
them. This is the fear, whether with or without reason, of the 
consequences which may result from it ; but such a prejudice is 
neither scientific, since it proceeds arbitrarily, nor moral, because 
it does not prefer truth to all else. 

Thus it is not possible to accept the doctrine of which Lordat 
is the most illustrious exponent, and which, while unreservedly 
subjecting to the laws of heredity the ' dynamism' (or the various 
modes of psychic activity) of the animal, exempts from them the 
6 dynamism ' of man. The author's intention is too plain. 1 He 

1 * If the laws,' says he, 'are identical in the two orders (animal and human),, 
analogy would lead us to suppose that the dynamism of brutes is like our own, 
and that man is only a nobler and better-developed animal, as Gall and his 



138 Heredity. 



would place between man and animals a chasm which has no 
existence. From either the physical or the mental point of view 
it is impossible to make man a being apart, to set up a ' human 
kingdom/ It is, no doubt, too daring to say, as some have done 
in our own time, 1 that there is nothing in man which is not found 
also in the animal, whether it be language, or the faculty of count- 
ing (the magpie counts up to seven), or moral ideas, or the 
sentiment of veneration and awe, which is the basis of the religious 
sentiment. But setting aside these hypothetical assertions, and 
these exaggerations in the opposite sense, which always cha- 
racterize a reaction, it is certain that, in the transition from the 
animal to the human, the axiom of Linnaeus remains true, Natura 
non facit sallns. Heredity is a biological law, which itself results 
from another law — that of the transfer, by generation, of the 
attributes of physical and mental life : and the laws of generation 
govern everything that lives — the plant as well as the animal, or 
as well as man. As we shall see hereafter, there is not one part 
of the domain of life subject to the laws of heredity and another 
part exempt from them. 

So chimerical is Lordat's hypothesis that, even in a psychologi- 
cal study of heredity, we must not think of separating the animal 
from the man. We must take one after another all the modes of 
mental life, and see how they are influenced by heredity, as well 
under the lower, or animal form, as under the higher, or human 
form. This we have tried to do here, but very roughly, since this 
work is but an essay ; yet, in the absence of a comparative 
psychology which might serve as a basis and plan for our ex- 
position, we are compelled to grope our way. 

Another doctrine, maintained by Virey, holds that we must 
distinguish 'between the moral qualities which appertain to the 
body, and the moral qualities which belong to the soul : ' the 
former are transmissible by heredity, the latter are not. And 
Lordat defends a similar thesis. ' In man/ he says, ' heredity 

followers have so persistently taught. But if these two heredities present 
different laws, we are justified in questioning the identity of the two 
dynamisms.' 

1 See the Bulletins dc la Societe d? Anthropologic, i 6re serie, vol. vi., et 2 e 
serie, vol. i. 



Are there Laws of Heredity ? 139 

controls everything relating to vital force, but does not control the 
indigenous or exotic qualities of the inner sense : or, in plainer 
language, unconscious modes of vital activity are hereditary ; not 
so the conscious modes.' 

The objection so formulated is vague, and has but little force if 
closely pressed; it rests on the idea of an absolute distinction 
between body and mind — an idea which, if it were admissible in 
Descartes' day, is so no longer. But if we look less at the letter 
than at the spirit of the objection— less at what it says than at 
what it means to say — we must acknowledge that it raises a nice 
question, on which now we do but touch, but which will hereafter 
be discussed. 

Among the ' moral qualities' appertaining to the body are 
reckoned in the first rank sensations and perceptions. 

The organism is inherited, and with it the organs of sense and 
their functions. But the imagination depends in great measure on 
our faculty of sense, and sensations with sensorial images are the 
raw material of cognition. It is no longer maintained that they 
are sufficient to constitute it. We know that the mind adds some- 
what, and that the phenomena are moulded by causality, time, and 
space. These conditions of all thought — the subjective forms of 
the mind, according to Kant ; the preformations of the organism, 
according to the physiologists — are universal, common to all men, 
and consequently, without exception, hereditary. 

If we set aside for the moment the question of intellectual 
activity, and consider only the sentiments, emotions, and passions ; 
we may yet be justified in placing these among those ' moral 
qualities which appertain to the body.' It will be readily admitted 
that the emotions differ accordingly as the person who experiences 
them is of lymphatic or nervous, of bilious or sanguine tempera- 
ment : and these original dispositions are the source whence 
afterwards spring our most complex sentiments. 

Hence, when closely examined, this assumed difference between 
the ' moral qualities which appertain to the mind,' and those which 
' appertain to the body,' entirely disappears. We seek it, and find 
it not — for it is not. Heredity has been willingly admitted in 
regard to certain inferior psychical conditions, and it was supposed 
that thus full justice was rendered to this principle ; but, logically 



140 Heredity. 



and necessarily, it has invaded the entire, field of psychology. 
This was but the natural consequence of a vague, loose, incon- 
sistent hypothesis, totally at variance with facts. Yet, as we have 
said, there is perhaps some ground for this distinction. This, 
then, is the important point, which the objection has not 
sufficiently declared or explained. 

Suppose that it has been distinctly proved that all modes of 
psychical activity — the senses, memory, imagination, reasonings 
sentiments, instincts, passions, normal or morbid dispositions — are 
transmissible : is the aggregate of these modes the whole sentient 
and conscious being ; or is there, besides these, a nescio quid called 
the /, the person, the genius, the character, that inner power 
which in its own way elaborates all these materials of sentiment 
and cognition, and impresses on them its own peculiar stamp ? 
Must it be considered that the various modes of psychical 
activity, by varied inter-relations, constitute in themselves the 
personality ; or is there something else ? Is the I a result or a 
cause? If we consider that like impressions are felt and trans- 
formed in widely different ways by different individuals, and that 
between genius and idiocy are found all possible shades of mental 
activity, one may be inclined to regard as reasonable the 
hypothesis of a principle of individuation, which explains these 
differences. And then would arise the question : Is the I, the 
personality, the constituent element of the individual, transmissible 
by heredity, as are the various modes of mental activity ? 

Such is, it would seem, the only true way in which to put this 
objection : and under this form it cannot be denied that it raises . 
a grave difficulty. We do not, however, now discuss it : a better 
occasion for so doing will hereafter present itself. 

The part played by psychological heredity has been doubted 
not only by physiologists, but also by so great a philosophic 
historian as Buckle. It is surprising that so clear a mind, which 
brought to the investigation of historic phenomena a rare penetra- 
tion, originality of method and scientific exactitude, should have 
misconceived a fact of such significance. 

We often hear of hereditary talents, hereditary vices, and 
hereditary virtues; but whoever will critically examine the evi- 
dence will find that we have no proof of their existence. The 



Are there Laws of Heredity? 141 

way in which they are commonly proved is in the highest degree 
illogical; the usual course being for writers to collect instances 
of some mental peculiarity found in a parent and in his child, 
and then to infer that the peculiarity was bequeathed. 

By this mode of reasoning we might demonstrate any pro- 
position ; since in all large fields of inquiry there are a sufficient 
number of empirical coincidences to make a plausible case in 
favour of whatever view a man chooses to advocate. But this is 
not the way in which truth is discovered ; and we ought to inquire 
not only how many instances there are of hereditary talents, etc., 
but how many instances there are of such qualities not being 
hereditary. 

Until something of this sort is attempted, we can know nothing 
about the matter inductively ; while until physiology and chemistry 
are much more advanced, we can know nothing about it 
deductively. 

These considerations ought to prevent us from receiving state- 
ments {Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, pp. 644, 678, and many 
other books) which positively affirm the existence of hereditary 
madness and hereditary suicide ; and the same remark applies to 
hereditary disease (on which see some admirable observations in 
Phillips on Scrofula, pp. 10 1 — 120, London, 1846) ; and with still 
greater force does it apply to hereditary views and hereditary 
virtues ; inasmuch as ethical phenomena have not been registered 
as carefully as physiological ones, and therefore our conclusions 
respecting them are even more precarious. 

In this objection, however preposterous it may appear, we find 
all the qualities of a thoroughly scientific mind — that is, one which 
receives evidence with caution. Yet it is difficult to see what 
method Buckle would have us adopt in researches of this kind. 
Is it the differential method, which consists in comparing the facts 
of heredity with the exceptions to it, in accounting for the latter, 
and in showing why they do not come under the law ? Possibly 
this might be done. Or is it the statistical method, which consists 
in accepting the facts as they present themselves, in grouping, on 
the one hand, those which have an hereditary character, and on 
the other those which have not, and in estimating arithmetically 
the relations of the two groups ? We shall see hereafter that this 
has been attempted. 



H 2 Heredity. 



It must be conceded to Buckle that the question of psycho- 
logical heredity is by no means one that _ can be treated with strict 
scientific rigour; and there are many reasons why this is so. 
Oftentimes in the course of this present work we have felt the 
insufficiency of the argument, 'A distinguished father, a distin- 
guished son — therefore talent is hereditary/ whereas we ought to 
be able to show that to a given mode of mental activity in the 
progenitor corresponds precisely the same mode in the descendant, 
or, at least, to say why this is not so. But this is too much to 
require in the present state of psychology. 

This granted, if we revert to the essential point of Buckle's 
objection, we find that in his'view the cases of heredity are simply 
fortuitous successions, such as are to be found whenever we com- 
pare a great mass of facts. If we take from the registers of a 
lottery the winning numbers through a long series of years, we 
should probably find that there were occasionally the same succes- 
sion of numbers, the result of mere chance. In this way, or 
nearly so, Buckle explains cases of heredity. He reduces the 
question to a calculation of probabilities. But this singular 
hypothesis had already been answered by a mathematician. 

Maupertuis, after citing a case of sexdigitism which persisted 
through four generations, adds : ' I presume no one would regard 
sexdigitism as the effect of mere chance. But suppose we so 
regard it, let us then see what is the probability that this accidental 
variation in a parent will not be repeated in the descendants. In 
the course of an inquiry made by me in a city of 100,000 inhabit- 
ants, I found two persons marked by this singular anomaly. 

1 Suppose — a thing not very easy — that three other cases escaped 
my observation, and that we have a man with six fingers for each 
20,000 souls ; the probability that his son or daughter will not be 
born with six fingers is as 20,000 to 1, and the probability that his 
grandson will not have six fingers will be as 20,000 times 20,000 
(or 4 millions) to 1. Finally, the probability that sexdigitism will 
not continue through three successive generations will be as 8000 
millions to 1, figures so large that the certainty of things best 
demonstrated in physics does not approximate to these proba- 
bilities.' 1 

1 Maupertuis, GLuvres, vol. ii. letter 17. 



Are there Laws of Heredity ? 143 

If we apply Maupertuis' argument to a few cases of psycho- 
logical heredity, for instance mental disorder, or some special talent 
(for painting, or music) persisting through three or four genera- 
tions, it is easy to see what becomes of Buckle's objection. 

in. 

The greater part of these objections would never have been 
raised, were it not for the serious error of reasoning only from the 
exceptio?is. To treat the question fairly, it ought first of all to have 
been properly stated, that is to say, the fact of heredity should 
have been considered, not partially, but in its whole extent in the 
entire domain of life, as we here propose to do. 

In order to proceed logically, we should in the first place have 
to determine what is meant by species. We will not enter into 
this very difficult question. It will be enough for us to lay down 
a few very simple, unquestionable and elementary facts, which will 
be admitted by all. 

When we compare together two living beings — that is to say, two 
sums of attributes — and find that these two beings possess in common 
a very large number of essential attributes, differing only in those 
which are secondary, so that the two beings may be regarded as 
very much alike, we say that they are of the same species. The 
many essential characteristics possessed by them in common we 
call specific; the few accidental characters which differentiate 
them we call individual. Thus, for instance, two individuals of the 
human species possess in common very many essential characters, 
being organic, vertebrate mammals, with all that is thereby implied, 
having senses, physiological or psychological functions, such as 
sensation, memory, imagination, reason. But they differ from one 
another in accidental or individual characteristics, as that the 
muscular system common to both is in the one very well developed, 
very slightly in the other ; that the faculty of memory common to 
both is weak in the one, and very strong in the other; that the 
faculty of reason common to both does not in the one go beyond 
the simplest acts, while in the other it includes the highest 
abstractions. 

Now, by the act of generation, in which heredity has its origin, 
every creature produces beings like itself. In the lower forms of 



144 Heredity. 



generation, such as gemmation and fission, this fact is evident. 
In the higher forms, where the connection of the two sexes is 
requisite, two contrary forces are brought together, and conse- 
quently are antagonistic. The result is, that the product will 
(though not without exceptions) resemble one or other of the 
parents, or both at once. This general truth, that the organisms 
of a given type descend from organisms of the same type, is so 
well established by countless instances that it has the character of 
an axiom. ' The tendency of a living being to repeat itself in its 
progeny,' says a certain naturalist, l seems to be a sort of necessity. 
It were difficult to imagine a creature which should not resemble 
its parents. In fact, so universal is this tendency that it is recog- 
nized as one of those fundamental facts which underlie all the 
natural sciences, and which, with regard to them, take the place 
held by axioms in the mathematical sciences.' 

This being understood, heredity appears in its true light, and 
the objections brought against it can be appreciated at their value; 
for the question already stated, ' Are cases of psychical heredity 
fortuitous, or are they the result of a law ? ' may plainly be resolved 
into several parts, each of which easily admits of answer. 

i. Are specific characteristics, physical or moral, transmitted by 
heredity ? — They are always transmitted, both in the animal and 
in man. 

2. Are those less general characteristics, which constitute races 
and varieties, hereditary ? — They also are hereditary ; a spaniel was 
never produced by a bull-dog, nor a white man by a negro. And 
this holds good also of psychical qualities : a given animal 
possesses not only the general instincts of the species, but also the 
peculiar instincts of the race. The negro inherits not only the 
psychological faculties which are common to all men, but also a 
certain peculiar form of mental constitution, namely, an excess 
of sensibility and imagination, sensual tendencies, incapacity for 
abstract thought, etc. 

3. Are purely individual characteristics hereditary ? — Facts have 
demonstrated that they are often so, both in physics and in morals. 

In conclusion, heredity always governs those broadly general 
characteristics which determine the species, always those less 
general characteristics which constitute the variety, and often 



The Laws of Heredity. 145 

individual characteristics. Hence the evident conclusion that 
heredity is the law, non-heredity the exception. Suppose a father 
and mother — both large, strong, healthy, active and intelligent — 
produce a son and a daughter possessing the opposite qualities. 
In this instance, wherein heredity seems completely set aside, it 
still holds good that the differences between parents and children 
are but slight, as compared with the resemblances. 

Let it not be said that we have dwelt too long on points that 
are self-evident. They are so clear that we forget them, and argue 
only from isolated cases, thus changing the state of the question 
by the way in which it is stated. But when, on the contrary, we 
consider the facts as a whole, heredity appears universal, and we 
are less surprised at finding characteristics that are hereditary, than 
in finding those which are not. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LAWS OF HEREDITY. 



Thus, then, heredity presents itself to us as a biological law, 
that is, inherent in every living thing, having no other limits than 
those of life itself. Life under all its forms — vegetal, animal and 
human, normal and morbid, physical and mental — is governed by 
this law. , It is, in fact, concerned with the essential and inmost 
nature of vital activity. Among the various functions which in 
their united action constitute life, two are primary— the one, nutri- 
tion, which preserves the individual, the other, generation, which 
perpetuates thq species. Some physiologists even reduce these to 
one, nutrition being, in their view, only a form of generation, or in 
the words of Claude Bernard, ' a continuous creation of organized 
matter by means of the histogenic processes appertaining to the 
living creature.' Ultimately, therefore, the vital functions are 
reduced to generation; and as it is from this that heredity 
immediately flows, we must conclude that the law of hereditary 
transmission has its rise in the sources of life itself. 

If we accept the foregoing views, the law of heredity would seem 
to be one of absolute simplicity. Like produces like : the progeni- 
tor is repeated in the descendant. Thus the primitive types would 



146 Heredity. 



remain, being continually reproduced, and the world of life would 
present the spectacle of perfect regularity and supreme monotony. 
But this is true only in theory. So soon as we come to the facts, 
we find the law is resolved into secondary laws, or it even appears 
to vanish in the exceptions. Not to speak of the external causes 
(chance, influence of circumstances) which interfere with the action 
of heredity, there are interior causes, inherent in heredity itself, 
which hinder the law from pursuing the simple course from like to 
like. A moment's reflection will make this plain. 

In the inferior creatures, in which generation takes place without 
sexual connection, hereditary transmission from the parent to the 
progeny occurs in a perfectly natural way. This happens in cases 
of fission, as in Trembley's hydra, or in the Nais, which naturally 
divide into two or more individuals like themselves ; and also m 
cases of gemmation, where a bud forms on an animal and is soon 
itself changed into a new and complete animal. 

But in the higher forms of generation sexual connection is 
indispensable ; as a struggle necessarily arises between the sexes, 
each parent tends to produce its like. Here hereditary transmis- 
sion can at best produce only a mixed constitution, holding from 
both parents. ' Clearly/ says De Quatrefages, t the mathematical 
law of heredity would be for the parent creature to reproduce itself 
completely in its progeny. And perhaps this law, absolute though 
it be, is to be found underlying all natural phenomena, but in 
every case it is masked by accessory circumstances, by the condi- 
tions amid which heredity acts. But it does not only rest on 
theoretical considerations, it rests also on facts. Although subject 
to profound and continual disturbance, still, if we note all the 
phenomena which show in individuals a tendency to obey the 
mathematical law, heredity is found to realize in the aggregate of 
each species the result which it fails to realize in isolated individuals. 
To use a figurative expression, the true meaning of which cannot 
fail to be apprehended, while it cannot be verified in the whole, it 
may be in detail.' 

The question is still more complicated when we descend to 
individual facts. We meet with so many oddities and exceptions, 
and so many contradictory opinions in explanation of them, that it 
seems as though, when we pass from theory to practice, all law 



The Laws of Heredity. 147 

had vanished. Still these facts, however numerous and varied they 
may be, may all be brought within the compass of a few formulas, 
which might be called the empirical laws of heredity. These real 
laws, which are so many aspects or incomplete expressions of the 
ideal law, are the following, so far as observation reveals them. 

1. Direct he?'edity, which consists in the transmission of paternal 
and maternal qualities to the children. This form of heredity 
offers two aspects : 

(1.) The child takes after father and mother equally as regards 
both physical and moral characters, a case, strictly speaking, of 
very rare occurrence, for the very ideal of the law would then be 
realized. 

Or (2), the child, while taking after both parents, more specially 
resembles one of them; and here again we must distinguish 
between two cases. 

a. The first of these is when the heredity takes place in the same 
sex — from father to son, from mother to daughter. 

/3. The other, which occurs more frequently, is where heredity 
occurs between different sexes — from father to daughter, from 
mother to son. 

2. Reversional Heredity, or atavism, consists in the reproduc- 
tion in the descendants of the moral or physical qualities of their 
ancestors. It occurs frequently between grandfather and grand- 
son, grandmpther and granddaughter. 

3. Collateral, or indirect heredity, which is of rarer occurrence 
than the foregoing, subsists, as indicated by its name, between 
individuals and their ancestors in the indirect line — uncle, or 
grand-uncle and nephew, aunt and niece. 

4. Finally, to complete the classification, we must mention the 
heredity of influence, very rare from the physiological point of 
view, and of which probably no single instance is proved in the 
moral order. It consists in the reproduction in the children by a 
second marriage of some peculiarity belonging to a former spouse., 

Such are the various formulas under which all the facts of 
heredity may be classed. We propose to study them in succession. 
When to this we have added, as the necessary complement, the 
study of the exceptions to these laws, we shall have passed in 
review every single case of heredity. 



148 Heredity. 



SECTION I. DIRECT HEREDITY. 

I. 

We have first to resort to physiology in order to clear the field r 
since the laws of physiological heredity have been oftener and far 
better studied than those of moral heredity ; yet so close is the 
connection between the two orders of facts, that a person can 
hardly study the one without the other. 

In the case of direct heredity, the concurrence of the two sexes 
in the formation of the product is now admitted by all physiolo- 
gists. We need, therefore, only refer to the ancient doctrines of 
the sfiermatists and the ovists. The former held that, notwith- 
standing the apparent concurrence of both sexes in generation,, 
the germ is contained in the male element alone. The latter, who 
held a doctrine the very reverse of this, but equally exclusive, 
maintained that the germ exists only in the female element. The 
first doctrine, which was adopted by Galen, Hartsoeker, Boerhaave r 
Leeuwenhoek, and the second, which was held by Malpighi, 
Vallisnieri, Spallanzani, Bonnet, Haller, and even De Blainville, 
are now equally abandoned. It is admitted that the child is 
sprung from both father and mother, and embryology demon- 
strates this. But opinions diverge in regard to the part taken 
by each of the parents. v 

If we take a purely theoretic point of view, it is easy enough to 
formulate the law of direct heredity. According to P. Lucas, it 
would consist in the ' absolute equilibrium in the physical and 
moral nature of the infant of the integral resemblances of the 
two parents.' The procreated individual would be, everywhere and 
always, nothing but the exact mean of his two parents ; the dis- 
tinct characters of both would be reproduced in their progeny — 
in every portion of his body, and in every faculty of his mind. 
But this is only a logical hypothesis, which very rarely becomes a 
reality in the higher animals ; and it is hardly rash to say that the 
law has never been met with in this ideal form. 

And yet we understand that this is the law, that is to say, the 
only formula broad enough to include all the phenomena; the 
only rule which flows of necessity from the nature of things, and 
which expresses the essence of heredity. 



The Laws of Heredity, 149 

It is easy to account for the disagreement between logic and 
experience. No law of nature is unconditional. They all require 
certain determinate conditions for their realization • and where 
these fail, the action of the law rests suspended, or without efficacy. 
Eut nowhere are the requisite conditions more numerous or more 
difficult to fulfil than in the phenomena of generation. For in 
order to produce in the infant this perfect equilibrium of paternal 
and maternal qualities, there must evidently be perfect equality of 
action on the part of both parents ; for it will be admitted that in 
ail races, and in all species, the general or partial preponderance in 
the act of reproduction appertains to that one of the parents in 
w r hom the general or partial force of constitution is the greater. 
A great number of facts, collected by a crowd of writers, show 
that this rule applies both to the vegetal and the animal world. 
This preponderance of one of the procreative individuals is very 
notable in crosses between distinct races or species. It is true 
that in this case there is a struggle not only between the sexes, 
b>ut between distinct specific forces. These crosses, however, onfy 
exhibit to us, more or less magnified, what takes place in ordinary 
cases. According to Rursh, marriages between Danes and East 
Indian women produce children with the physique and the vigour 
-of the European type, while nothing of this kind occurs when 
these same women marry other Europeans. The intermarriage of 
Causasians and Mongolians produces, according to Klaproth, 
half-breeds in whom the Mongolian type is always predominant, 
whatever may be the sex of the half-breed. From Levaillant's 
observations ( Voyage en Cafrerie) on the half-bred children of 
Europeans and Hottentots, we gather that in them the moral 
nature is always determined by the race of the father. ' When- 
ever it happens, which is but rarely, that a white woman has 
intercourse with a Hottentot, the child has always the good-nature, 
and the gentle and kindly inclinations, of the father. But the 
children of white men and Hottentot women, on the other hand, 
have in themselves the germs of all vices and unruly passions.' 
Cross breeding in the animal races exhibits also the unquestionable 
^preponderance of one of the parents. 

This being admitted, it may be readily shown that among the 
higher animals the complete conditions necessary for the realiza- 
tion of the ideal law can nowhere be found. 



150 Heredity. 



1. There must be first of all a perfect correspondence between 
the physical and mental constitution of the parents. A moment's 
reflection will show that each of these two general states — the 
physical and the mental constitution — is itself the result of many 
particular states, which, taken together, impress on every individual 
that distinct and special mark which is in physiology called 
temperament, in psychology, character. 

2. But even if these first conditions are fulfilled, there is some- 
thing more required. It is not enough that the physical and 
mental constitution of both parents should be equipoised in a 
general sense ; there are, moreover, particular conditions of age 
and health, which are indispensable. Disproportion in the ages of 
the two parents, where it does not produce sterility, gives the 
preponderance to the younger. Experiments made by Girou de 
Euzareingues on various animals show that the progeny of an old 
male and a young female are less like their father, in proportion as- 
he is feeble and the mother vigorous, and that the progeny of an 
old female and a young male resemble the mother less in propor- 
tion as he is vigorous. Nor is the influence of the actual state of 
health, of vigour, or of cheerfulness in one of the parents less, 
marked in the progeny. 

3. Finally, there are sundry other states more accidental and 
transitory than those named, which influence the act of generation.. 
Positive facts show that these states, all transitory as they are r 
exert a very powerful influence on the progeny, and ensure the 
preponderance of one or the other sex. We need only recall the 
fact that nothing is more common than the intellectual feebleness 
of children begotten in a state of intoxication ; that a popular- 
tradition, adopted by several authors, and to some extent supported 
by history, represents illegitimate children as cleverer, more hand- 
some, and more healthy than others, because they are ' love- 
children.' On the other hand, 'when parents,' says Burdach, 'have 
a dislike to one another, they beget ugly forms, and their children 
are less lively and vigorous.' 

It is easy to see that there are many circumstances of this kind 
which must influence the act of generation. When we consider 
how impossible it is to have these general, particular and for- 
tuitous conditions in perfect equilibrium in the two parents, we 



The Laws of Heredity, 151 

find it natural that the law already stated should remain in the 
purely theoretic state. 

Hence we have to seek in the facts themselves for some empiric 
formula, which may be deduced from them. Here arise many 
opinions, of which the following are the chief. 

The simplest is that which holds that there is an invariable 
connection between the heredity of physical resemblance and the 
heredity of moral resemblance. That parent who transmits the 
former, or who influences it most, transmits also the latter, by 
reason of the strict correlation existing between the two. This 
doctrine, which has been maintained by Burdach, rests, in principle, 
on the general relations between the physical and moral natures ; 
and, in fact, on numerous cases furnished by experience. The case 
of twins is particularly cited, as commonly presenting an extra- 
ordinary conformity, not only in the external form and in the 
features of the face, but also in tastes, in faculties, and even in 
fortune. 

Da Gama Machado, author of a Theory of Resemblances, 
which contains a large number of curious facts for the study of 
physical heredity, holds that the parent who transmits his colour 
transmits likewise his character. ' In the colonies/ says he, ' the 
half-breed, called griffon or fusco (dark), resulting from the union 
of a mulatto and a negress, is much darker than the mulatto. 
But this difference of colour is accompanied by a difference in 
character : the issue of a mulatto and a negress are far more 
docile than the issue of a negress and a white man. If a wild 
duck couple with a domestic duck, the duckling resulting from this 
union, having its father's colour, leaves the barn-yard and returns 
to the wild life. If the linnet be crossed with the canary or the 
goldfinch, the transmission of instincts will, according to this 
author, follow the transmission of colour, and if there is a mixture 
of colours, there will be also a mixture of instincts. 

Girou de Buzareingues, whose experiments on generation are 
well known, distinguishes two lives in every individual, whatever 
the sex : The external life, on which depend the nervous system 
of the animal life and the muscular system, of which motor activity, 
will, and intelligence are the attributes ; and the internal life, 
which comprises the cellular tissue, the digestive system, the great 



152 Heredity. 



sympathetic, and the whole nerve-system of the organic life : on 
this depend internal sensibility and the sentiments. 

Each of these two lives would have the faculty of reproduction ; 
consequently the transmission of the external life would imply the 
transmission of the intelligence, while the transmission of the 
internal life would imply that of the sentiments. 1 

Gall and his disciple Spurzheim, rejecting these doctrines, main- 
tained an opinion which results logically from their system — that 
the analogy in the conformation of the various regions of the 
cranial arch implies analogous psychological constitution. ' It has 
been always observed,' says Gall, ' that when brothers and sisters 
resemble one another, or their father and mother, in the shape of 
the head, they also resemble each other in psychical and mental 
qualities.' 

We may fairly consider that, since every one of these doctrines 
is supported by a large number of facts, they all may be esteemed 
partial generalizations; but since they are all open to many 
exceptions, none can be accepted as a total generalization. Thus 
is theory confirmed by experience : reasoning deductively, we 
arrived at the conclusion that the perfect law of heredity would 
never be realized ; and now the examination of the facts shows 
that no empiric formula attains the breadth of a general law. 

The only thing that results clearly from this conflict of doctrines 
is, that in point of fact there is always a preponderance of one of 
the parents. 

In the case of direct heredity, the child is always more specially 
like either the father or the mother. 

This preponderance, moreover, is never exclusive, as will appear 
hereafter, from some curious facts. In spite of appearances, the 
heredity of parents to children is never unilateral, but always 
bilateral. The phenomena of reversionary heredity prove that, 
although the influence of one of the parents on the child may 
seem abolished, it never is annihilated, and thus the law of equality 
of action is as far as possible realized. 

The phenomena of cross-breeding confirm what has been said. 
Anthropologists have drawn up tables wherein the influence of the 



1 De la Generation, pp. 130, 131, 



The Laws of Heredity. 



153 



father and that of the mother, each represented by a fraction, are 
supposed to be equal in the production of the half-breed. But 
this hypothesis, as expressed in the following table, is altogether 
theoretic. 



White and Black. 



Generations. 


Parents. 


Offspring. 


Blood. 
White. Black. 


1st 


White + Negro 


Mulatto 


1 
•2 


x. 


2nd 


( White 
Mulatto + < 

I Negro 


Tierceroon 
Griffo 


3 

4 

1 

4 


1 

3 

4 


3rd 


' ( White 
Tierceroon+ < 

/ Negro 


Quadroon 
Ditto 


7 

1 
8 


1 
8 

7 
6 


4th 


^ White 
Quadroon + < 

/ Negro 


Quinteroon 
Ditto 


1 5 

lo 

1 
16 


I 
10 

1 5 

10 



But, in fact, cross-breeding does not by any means proceed with 
■such mathematical regularity. Not to speak of the numerous 
cases in which the union of white and black results in a child 
entirely black, or entirely white, in half-breeds there is always a 
preponderance of one or other of the parents. Burmeister, one of 
the closest observers of the mulattoes of South America and of 
the West Indian Islands, denies that the mulatto is exactly the 
mean between his two parents. In the immense majority of cases, 
his characters are borrowed from both races, but one of them is 
always predominant, and that usually the negro race. Pruner 
Bey, who has carefully studied the mulattoes in Egypt and Arabia, 
passes the same judgment. He observes the marked predomi- 
nance of the negro type. It is manifest in the curly, woolly hair ; in 
the general form and dimensions of the skull; in the forehead, 
usually low and slightly receding ; in the conformation of the feet, 
and in a prognathism which scarcely ever disappears in the first 
generation. 



154 Heredity. 



The foregoing observations may be thus summarized : In the 
case of direct heredity the child derives its qualities from father 
and mother. 

There is always a preponderance of one of these. 

It will, perhaps, be asked whether, after having treated the 
question mainly from the physiological point of view, we ought 
not now to take it up again from the psychological point of view, 
and search history for facts in support of this first form of direct 
heredity — that is, for cases of persons who derived their qualities 
from both father and mother. Such cases might be found. It 
might be said that Alexander resembled Philip in some respects,. 
Olympias in others. Nero was the worthy son of Agrippina ; but 
it is not to be forgotten that his father, Domitius Ahenobarbus, was 
noted for his cruelty : he had one of his freedmen put to death for 
refusing to drink to excess ; he purposely crushed to death a child 
on the Appian Way ; and he was wont to say : ' Of me and 
Agrippina nothing can be born that is not accursed.' Michelet 
declares that Queen Elizabeth resembled both Henry VIII. and 
Ann Boleyn. According to the same historian, the Duke de 
Vendome was most like his mother, Gabrielle d'Estrees ; but in 
his i waggish look comes out his Gascon ancestry and the great 
Bearnais jester.' (Henri IV.) Schopenhauer, who explains the 
question of heredity according to his metaphysical system, holds 
that whatever is primary and fundamental in the individual — 
character, passions, tendencies — is inherited from the father : the 
intelligence, a secondary and derivative faculty, directly from the 
mother. He was pleased to imagine that he found in his own 
person the irrefutable evidence of this doctrine. Intellectual and 
subtle like his mother, who had literary tastes and lived in 
Goethe's circle at Weimar, he was, like his father, shy, obstinate, 
intractable : he was a man of ' scowling mien, and of fantastic 
judgments.' 1 

It would not be difficult to multiply instances, but the labour 
would be wholly useless ; for the question before us now is, not 
whether the child derives its qualities from both father and mother 

1 Schopenhauer, Die Welt ah Wille und Vorstehung, vol. i. §23; vol. iL 
book iv. ch. 43. 



The Laws of Heredity. 155; 

(about which there can be no doubt), but whether there are cases* 
where it derives them in equal degree from both. If such a case 
were to occur, we could not show that it did, especially as regards 
moral resemblances. To that end we must needs have exact pro- 
cesses of measurement, which do not exist; "we should have to 
estimate quantities and not qualities. The foregoing examples, 
and all the others we might accumulate, could prove only this one 
thing, that there is always a more or less marked preponderance 
of one of the two parents. Cases occur where the preponderant 
action of the father or of the mother is manifested in a singular 
way, each parent seeming to have, as it were, chosen some par- 
ticular organ. Thus the father may transmit to the child the brain, 
and the mother the stomach; one the heart, the other the liver;, 
one the great intestine, the other the pancreas ; one the kidneys, 
the other the bladder. These facts have been established by 
animal and human anatomy. They give the organic reason for the 
intercrossing of instincts, which is often so curious, and of the 
morbid and passionate predispositions of both parents in the 
child. 

Sometimes, too, one of the parents transmits the entire physical,, 
the other the entire moral nature. The most curious and incon- 
testable instance of this is the case of Lislet-GeorTroy, engineer 
in Mauritius. He was the son of a white man and of a very 
stupid negress. In physical constitution he was as much a negro 
as his mother; he had the features, the complexion, the woolly 
hair, and the peculiar odour of his race. In moral constitution he 
was so thoroughly a white as regards intellectual development, that 
he succeeded in vanquishing the prejudices of blood, so strong 
in the colonies, and in being admitted into the most aristocratic 
houses. At the time of his death he was Corresponding Member 
of the Academy of Sciences. 

Thus we are brought to the examination of cases of unilateral 
heredity — the word unilateral being here taken, as has been ex- 
plained, in a restricted sense. 



156 Heredity, 



n. 

Whenever, then, the strict conditions of intermixture are wanting, 
the rule is that one of the parents is preponderant. When we 
study empirically the laws of heredity, we find that this case is of 
by far the most frequent occurrence. Common language translates 
this everyday experience into such phrases as these: this child 
reminds one of his father ; or, that child is the image of its mother. 
But experience also teaches us that this preponderance takes place 
in two ways, being sometimes direct, sometimes diagonal. 

Sometimes the preponderance is manifested in an individual 
of the one sex on the child of the same sex ; in that case the son 
resembles the father • the daughter the mother. 

Again, this preponderance is manifested in the opposite sex ; 
then the daughter resembles the father, and the son the mother. 

We will consider the latter case first. 

When we study heredity empirically, when, that is, we observe 
facts and the generalizations which immediately result from it, the 
formula which includes the largest number of facts and admits of 
the fewest exceptions is the following : Heredity passes from one 
sex to the opposite. This assertion may at first appear strange, 
and even entirely at variance with what has already been said, 
that like produces like. This will hereafter be explained ; but 
perhaps it will appear less difficult of comprehension if we follow 
heredity through several generations. It will then be seen to pass 
from the grandfather to the mother, and then from the mother to 
the son; or from the grandmother to the father, and from the 
father to the daughter, v Thus it returns to its starting-point. 

But not to dwell on this question here, we would remark that 
the thesis of cross heredity is admitted by several great physio- 
logists, such as Haller, Burdach, Girou de Buzareingues, and- 
Bicherand. ' This explains/ says the latter, l why so many great 
men have mediocre sons.' Michelet thinks that history justifies 
him in broadly affirming the existence of cross heredity. 'No 
other king,' says he, speaking of Louis XVI., ' exemplifies better 
a law of which history has but few exceptions. The king was a 
foreigner. Every son takes after his mother. The king was the 
son of a foreign woman, and had her blood. Succession in such 



The Laws of Heredity. 157 

cases has nearly always the effect of an invasion. The evidences 
of this are numberless. Catherine and Marie de Medicis gave 
us pure Italians ; in the same way La Farnese may be traced in 
Carlos II. of Spain ; Louis XVI. was a real Saxon king, and more 
German than the Germans themselves. 7 1 

Dr. P. Lucas, though he does not explicitly accept this law, still 
does not reject it. 

Let us, therefore, look at the facts which support it. These we take 
at three sources : intermixture of races, mental diseases, and history. 

1. From the physiological point of view cases of cross heredity 
are very numerous under normal conditions, that is, when the 
parents are healthy and of good constitutions. When one of 
them presents any anomaly or deformity, we find that cross- 
heredity is still more common : thus, a curved spine, lameness, 
rickets, sexdigitism, deaf-muteness, mycrophthalmy — in short, all 
organic imperfections — pass from the father to the daughters, and 
from the mother to the sons. 2 

From the psychological point of view, Gall cites the curious- 
case of twins of opposite sexes, where the boy was like the 
mother, a very stupid woman, and the girl like the father, who was 
a man of considerable talent. 

In cross breeding, this appears very plainly. When a dog is 
crossed with a wolf-bitch, the males usually inherit the character of 
the wolf, the females that of the dog. It even appears that this 
transfer of qualities to the opposite sex takes place more regularly 
with regard to moral than to physical characters. As will be seen, 
Buffon, after in vain trying to bring about a crossing of a dog and 
a she-wolf, abandoned the attempt. But chance brought about 
that which art could not do. The wolf dropped two cubs; the 
one a male which physically resembled the dog, but in character 
was wild and savage ; the other, a female, physically resembled the 
wolf, but in disposition was gentle, familiar, and even trouble- 
somely affectionate. From the crossing of a he-goat and a bitch 
hound sprang young ones, some of which were like the goat, 
others like the bitch : the latter had all the habits of their sire. 

1 Histoire de France, vol. xvii. 

2 Girou has a great number of observations on this point. — De la Generation, 
276—284. 



158 Heredity. 



6 A wild torn cat,' says Girou, 'and a domestic cat produced two 
torn cats which were like their mother, and were gentle and 
familiar like her, and one she-cat, which resembled the father, and 
was wild like him, and far more shy than the other two kittens.' 

The same author states that hunters have a proverb which says, 
Dog from bitch and bitch from dog (' Chien de chienne et chienne 
de chien), meaning that the mother's qualities are found in the son, 
and the father's in the daughter. 

The Arabs, who think so much of the genealogy of their horses, 
show a marked preference for blood on the female side over the 
male side. 

We may also cite decisive facts drawn from the human race. 

* P was in the habit,' says Girou, ' of going to sleep with the 

Tight leg crossed upon the left. One of his daughters came into 
the world with the same habit ; she constantly assumed that pos- 
ture in the cradle, in spite of the resistance offered by the napkin, 

< I know several girls who resemble their fathers, and who from 
them have inherited peculiar and extraordinary habits, not to be 
attributed either to imitation or to education ; as also of boys who 
from birth have borne a very striking resemblance, whether physi- 
cally or morally, to their mothers \ but propriety forbids all detail 
on this subject. 

' Here I would observe that the external and the moral resem- 
blance of the son to the mother is far less frequent and less 
perfect than that of the daughter to the father/ 

2. Mental disorders furnish a considerable number of cases 
in support of cross heredity. These are to be found scattered 
through the works of writers on insanity. Baillarger, in his Recher- 
thes stir PAnatomie, la R/iysiologie, et la Pathologie die Systeme 
Nerveux, has endeavoured to go over the whole ground. In 571 
cases observed, he found 246 of cross heredity and 325 of direct. 
The result, as we see, is not favourable to the thesis which 
regards cross heredity as of the more frequent occurrence. The 
author has not failed to draw this conclusion, which will be 
hereafter examined. 

3. We need now to collect some facts from history, restricting 
ourselves to well-known personages, and eliminating carefully all 
cases in which hereditary transmission appears questionable. 



The Laws of Heredity. 



159 



Heredity from Mother to Son. 



mother. 
Olympias 
Cornelia 
Livia 

Agrippina . 
Faustina 
Scemias 
Mammaea 
Marozia 

Blanche of Castille . 
Berengaria . 
Charlotte of Savoy . 
Louise of Savoy . 
Mary Stuart 
Catherine de Medicis 
Jeanne d'Albret 
Marie de Medicis 
Anne-Christine Marlin 
Mdlle. de Tencin 
Genevieve de Vassau 

Santi Lomaka (Greek) 



Mrs. Byron (Catherine Gordon) 



SON. 

Alexander the Great 

The Gracchi 

Tiberius 

Nero 

Commodus 

Heliogabalus 

Alexander Severus 

Pope John XI. 

Louis IX. 

St. Ferdinand 

Charles VIII. 

Francis I. 

James I. (?) 

Her sons 

Henri IV. 

Louis XIII. 

Buffon 

D'Alembert 

Mirabeau 

Andre ) ^, , • 

M.-J. ) Chenier 

Goethe 
Byron 



Remarks. — Alfonso XL, King of Castille, famed for his re- 
ligious zeal and his love of warfare against the Moors, was the 
father of Berengaria, Blanche, and Uraca. The first of these 
became the mother of St. Ferdinand. The second had four sons, 
among them St. Louis and Charles of Anjou, both ascetics, who 
mortified their flesh with iron girdles, scourgings, extreme fastings, 
etc. The third made her son Sancho take the monastic habit, 
though called to the throne of Portugal. 

Buffon, who held the doctrine of cross heredity, used to say 
that he himself took after his mother. ' He held it for a principle, 
says Herault de Se'chelles, ' that childen usually inherit intellectual 



i6o 



Heredity. 



and moral qualities from their mother. And this he applied to his. 
own case, speaking in the highest terms of praise of his mother, 
who in point of fact was a woman of much ability, extensive 
knowledge, and of a superior mind. 

Mirabeau (Friend of Humanity) was wont to say of his son : 
6 He possesses all the low qualities of the maternal stock.' 

Goethe resembled his father physically, but psychologically he 
resembled his mother by his strong instinct of self-preservation, 
his dislike of all strong emotions, and his caustic and biting 
speech. (For well-known anecdotes on this point, see his Life by 
Henri Blaze, and Life by Lewes.) 

By his servant maid, whom he married, a woman of inferior 
intellect, he had several children, one only of them a boy ; they all 
died young. This son resembled Goethe in bodily vigour, but he 
was of narrow mind like his mother, and Wieland used to call 
him the son of the handmaiden (der Sohn der Magd). 

Heredity from Father to Daughter. 



FATHER. 

Aristippus, the Cyrenaic 

sopher 
Theon, the geometrician 
Scipio 
Caesar 
Cicero 
Caligula 
Charlemagne . 
Alexander VI. 
Louis XL 
Louis XII. . 

Henry VIII. . 

Henri II. . 
Henri IV. 
Cromwell . 
Gustavus Adolphus 
The Regent 
Necker . 



philo- 



DAUGHTER. 

Areta 

Hypatia 

Cornelia 

Julia (Pompey's wife) 

Tullia 

Julia Drusilla 

His daughters (?) 

Lucretia Borgia 

Anne de Beaujeu 

Claude de France 
/ Elizabeth 
1 Mary 

Marguerite de Valois 

Henrietta of England 

His daughters 

Christina 

His daughters 

Madame de Stael 



The Laws of Heredity, 161 

Remarks. — Complaint having been made to Caligula that his 
daughter, two years old, scratched the little children who were her 
playfellows and even tried to tear out their eyes, he replied with 
a laugh, ' I see ; she is my daughter.' 

6 The Regent/ says Michelet, ' took after his mother, a robust, 
masculine Bavarian woman. She was of an inquiring, active 
mind, who roamed in all fields of science, and had a liking for 
general culture, which was in those times rare in France." 
(Histoire de France, tome xiv.) Her son, the Regent, was a 
fool : her daughters were extremely strange. The eldest, the 
Duchesse de Berry, a charming woman of unbridled passions, was 
certainly mad. The second, who possessed her father's versatility, 
was an encyclopaedic whirlwind. The third and fourth were all 
caprice and folly. They astonished Italy and Spain with such 
daring scandals that it is impossible not to see madness in all they 
did. 

Lucas, following Carlyle, thus sums up the genealogy of the 
Cromwells. Robert Cromwell, grandson of the terrible and 
frenzied instrument of Henry VIII. in his contest with Rome, 
married Catharine Stuart, a second cousin of Charles I. To 
Oliver, the only male among the seven children which were the 
fruit of this strange marriage, passed the enthusiastic and powerful 
genius of the Cromwells, and it raised him to the highest station. 
Oliver took to wife Eliza Bouchier, a woman of gentle disposition. 
His male issue were ' Arcadian Shepherds/ his daughters more 
fanatical than himself. 

in. 

We next consider the third form of direct heredity, the pre- 
ponderance of one parent in the children of the same sex. 

This, like the preceding form, is based upon a large number of 
facts derived from physiology, psychology, and history. 

Possibly these are not so numerous as the facts of cross 
heredity. This, however, is no more than a vague and general 
impression, in short, a mere hypothesis. Against the questionable 
arguments derived from the number of facts, the upholders of the 
contrary opinion might not only cite facts, but might also allege a 
theoretical consideration in favour of their view, which is not 

M 



1 62 Heredity. 



without value ; they might say that their thesis is only a special 
application of a maxim generally admitted with regard to gener- 
ation, viz. that like produces like. When we treat of reversional 
heredity, .we shall endeavour to show that the conflict between 
these two opinions is only apparent, and also how they may be 
harmonized. 

Among the physiological facts which exhibit heredity trans- 
mitted in the same sex, we may cite the family of Edward 
Lambert, the human porcupine, in which a peculiar affection was 
transmitted only to the males. Daltonism, or colour-blindness, 
manifests itself more frequently, as we have seen, in men than in 
women; yet it has been transmitted through five generations to 
twelve persons, all females. Constitution, temperament, fecundity, 
longevity, idiosyncrasies, or anomalies of every kind, pass as often 
from father to son as from mother to daughter. 

From the psychological point of view, as we have said, Bail- 
larger, resting on the statistical data of mental disease, inclines to 
the belief that heredity usually occurs between individuals of the 
same sex. His 671 cases were distributed as follows : — 

Cases of Mental Disease. 

Total. 
In the father 225 In the mother 346 571 
„ sons 128 „ daughters 197 325 

„ daughters 97 „ sons 149 246 

We now turn to the statistical reports made to the French 
Government in i860, of which we have already spoken. 

MEN WOMEN 

In 1,000 cases. In 1,000 cases. 

128 inherited from the father 130 inherited from the mother 

no „ „ the mother 100 „ „ the father 

26 „ „ both. 26 „ „ both. 

It is plain that these two tables lead to the same conclusions. 

We hold that the study of mental disease is of great importance 
for experimental psychology, and well adapted for resolving many 
problems ; yet we would not place over-much confidence in it in 
the present case. 



The Laws of Heredity. 163 

In the first place, if the author, basing his judgment entirely on 
the fact of mental alienation, proposes thence to draw a conclusion 
covering the whole question of heredity, physical as well as moral, 
he makes so great a mistake in logic that the mere statement is a 
sufficient condemnation. It would be too arbitrary to rely on a 
single characteristic, for the heredity of insanity does not include 
that of the muscular system, of the features, of the complexion, or 
the apparatus of organic life. 

But if, as is probable, he means to speak only of mental here- 
dity, the fault of his reasoning, though less grave, is still very serious. 
The heredity of mental affections is only one of the forms of 
psychological heredity, and it is not legitimate to argue from one 
to all. To derive from parents a morbid predisposition which will 
hereafter lead to mania, monomania, hallucination, or dementia, 
by no means necessitates the inheritance of their entire psycho- 
logical constitution, their character, their genius, their scientific 
and artistic aptitudes, their memory, passions, or sentiments ; facts 
prove the contrary. In very many cases the cause of mental 
disease is altogether physical — a lesion of the brain or of some 
other organ ; and nothing justifies the assertion, that as these 
lesions are inherited, therefore the whole mental dynamism is also 
inherited. 

Thus the arguments drawn from mental pathology have not so 
wide a range as Baillarger assigns to them. But if they are 
insufficient to prove that heredity in the same sex is more frequent 
than cross heredity, they do, however, prove that it is of frequent 
occurrence. 

We now cite from history some well-established instances of this 
form of heredity. 

Heredity from Father to Son. 

father. son. 

Nicomachos . . . Aristotle 
Scipio (Publius Cornelius) Scipio (Africanus major) 

Vespasian . . . Titus 

Verus (iElius) . . Verus (Lucianus) 

Pepin d'Heristal . . Charles Martel 

Charles Martel . . Pepin the Short 



164 



Heredity. 



Heredity from Father to Son {continued). 



FATHER. 

Pepin the Short . 
Hamilcar 

Seneca (Marcus) . 

Artevelt (Jaques van) 
Guise (Frangois) 
Nassau (William of) . 
Scaliger (Julius Caesar) 
Casaubon (Isaac) 
Tasso (Bernardo) 
Sanzio (Giovanni) 
Bellini (Jacopo) . 
Teniers (David) 

Miens (F.) . 

Van der Velde (William) 

Racine (Jean) 

Mozart (Johann George) 

Beethoven (Johann) 

Niebuhr . 

Buckland (W.) . 

Herschell (W.) 

Ampere (Andre) . 

Geoffroy St.-Hilaire (Etienne) 

De Candolle (A. Pyrame) 

Arago (Frangois) 

Pitt (Lord Chatham) . 

DTsraeli (Isaac) 

Mill (James) 

Schopenhauer . 



SON. 

Charlemagne 
( Hannibal 
< Hasdrubal 
( Mago 
C Seneca 
{ Gallio 

Artevelt (Philip van) 

Guise (Henri) 

Nassau (Maurice of) 

Scaliger (Joseph) 

Casaubon (Meric) 

Tasso (Torquato) 

Rafaelle (Sanzio) 

Bellini (Giovanni) 

Teniers (David) 
f Guillaume-Mieris 
1 Jean 

Van der Velde (William) 

Racine (Louis) 

Mozart (Johann) 

Beethoven (Ludwig) 

Niebuhr (Carsten) 

Buckland (F.) 

Herschell (J.) 

Ampere (J.-J.) 

GeofTroy St.-Hilaire (Isidore) 

De Candolle (Alphonse) 

Arago (Emmanuel) 

Pitt (W.) 

DTsraeli (Benjamin) 

Mill (J. Stuart) 

Schopenhauer (Arthur) 



Remarks. — In many families the transmission from father to son 
has continued for several generations, as has been already noticed 



The Laws of Heredity. 165 

in the family of Charlemagne ; among artists it is frequent (Beet- 
hoven, Mozart, Van der Velde, etc.). 

L. Verus, colleague of Marcus Aurelius, is commonly known, 
but not so his father, ^Elius Verus. Yet a knowledge of his cha- 
racter would serve to explain that of his son. In Spartianus 
{Historia Augusta) are some curious details as to his beds of 
roses carefully picked and prepared, etc., showing his extreme 
effeminacy. 

Heredity from Mother to Daughter. 

It is not surprising that there are not many instances under this 
head. Probably any one who will tax his memory a little will 
recollect instances of this kind occurring in ordinary families. In 
history, science, literature, this is more difficult. Women have 
there acted but an inconsiderable part, and it is therefore natural 
that cases of heredity between famous mothers and famous 
daughters should be rare. Still here are a few. 

The Emperor Augustus, who was several times married, had by 
his wife Scribonia his celebrated daughter Julia. She became the 
wife of Agrippa and had a daughter, another Julia. Both of them 
caused much grief to Augustus by their infamous conduct, ' Julias, 
filiam et neptem,' says Suetonius (c. 65), omnibus probris contam- 
inate relegavit' 

We may remark in passing that according to the same historian 
Caesar had by Cleopatra a son, 'similem Caesaris forma et incessu.' 
He was called Csesarion, and died very young. 

Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, ' Mother of the camps,' was 
a strong-willed, heroic woman, ' pervicax irae,' says Tacitus. 
Being Agrippa's daughter, she had in her character some of her 
father's sternness. * My daughter/ said Tiberius to her, ' you are 
always complaining because you do not reign.' She was the 
mother of the famous Agrippina, who made Claudius her slave, 
and raised Nero to the imperial throne. 

We have already mentioned Marozia, mother of Pope John XL 
This woman, who was famous in the tenth century for her wealth, 
Jier influence, and her misconduct, had her vices from her mother, 
Theodora, and transmitted them to her son. 

Michelet points out the resemblance between Marie Leczinska 



1 66 Heredity 



and her daughter Adelaide. 'The queen, before her marriage, had a 
tendency to epileptic fits. Even after her marriage, being agitated 
with causeless fears, she would rise from her bed at night and walk 
about. Madame Adelaide appears to have inherited much of this 
excitability. She was brave, with the courage of her race, with 

some childish fears, as for instance of thunder The queen 

loved her father (Stanislas), and was very much beloved by him, 
which aroused her mother's jealousy. This, too, Adelaide in- 
herited from her mother, and she loved her father beyond all 
bounds of reason.' (Histoire de France, tome xvi.) 

To sum up all that we have said about direct heredity : it is 
certain that the child inherits from both parents. It never happens 
that either parent exercises an exclusive influence. The action of 
one is always preponderant, this preponderance takes place in two 
ways, either within the same sex or from one sex to the other. As 
we have seen, both of these are of very frequent occurrence. 

The only question is, which is the more frequent ? 

An answer is impossible, and even if it were possible, it would 
be to no purpose. To make it perfectly exact we should have to 
bring together all the cases of direct heredity and range them in 
two groups : on the one hand, cross heredity, and on the other 
heredity in the same sex, and then compare the totals. Yet all 
this labour, even if possible, would lead to nothing. Between 
these totals there would probably be so small a difference that no 
one could say which expressed the law and which the exceptions. 
Whenever a case of this kind arises, we may say that both sides 
are right and both wrong ; that each possesses only a fragment of 
the law, thinking he possesses the whole, and that there is some 
higher point of view which will reconcile the two. With regard 
to heredity, we seek that law of which fragments only have so far 
^en given to us by our empiric generalizations. But we must 
first study the phenomena of atavism. 

SECTION II. — ATAVISM. 

Whenever a child, instead of resembling his immediate parents, 
resembles one of his grandparents, or some still remoter ancestor, 
or even some distant member of a collateral branch of the family — 
a circumstance which must be attributed to the descent of all its 



The Laws of Heredity. 167 

members from a common ancestor — this is called a case of atavism. 
This is called reversional heredity (Lucas) ; reversion, or in the 
more expressive German term, Riickschlag and Riickschritt 

The fact was known to the ancients; Aristotle, Galen, and 
Pliny speak of it. Plutarch mentions a Greek woman who gave 
birth to a negro child, and was brought to trial for adultery, but it 
transpired that she was descended in the fourth degree from an 
Ethiopian. Montaigne expresses his astonishment at this, ' Is it 
not marvellous/ says he, c that this drop of seed from which we 
are produced should bear the impression, not only of the bodily 
form, but even of the thoughts and the inclinations of our fathers ? 
Where does this drop of water keep this infinite number of forms ? 
and how does it bear these likenesses through a progress so hap- 
hazard and so irregular that the great-grandson shall resemble the 
great-grandfather, the nephew the uncle ? ' 

In the first part of this work are recounted a large number of 
cases of atavism ; here it will suffice to call attention to some 
curious facts which will serve to show the tendency of heredity. 

The phenomenon of reversion is of very frequent occurrence in 
vegetal and animal races. Dr. Broca gives a curious example, the 
result of an experiment he made with a view to study the formation 
of races by methodical selection. He took the seeds of corn- 
flower which he gathered promiscuously in the fields, and sowed 
them. This produced blue and red cornflowers. He then sowed 
the seed of the red cornflowers only, and obtained about a hundred 
flowers, two thirds of which were blue, the remainder varying from 
violet to rose colour. If again the seed of the rose cornflower be 
sown, the result will be a few blue flowers, many red, rose, and 
even white. It would thus be possible to create a white species, 
but only by a constant struggle against the phenomena of reversion 
which persistently reproduce the primitive type. 1 

Girou de Buzareingues gives at length the history of a strain of 
dogs, a cross between the pointer and the spaniel, which is briefly 
as follows. In the first generation the product is a spaniel ; this, 
being crossed with a pure pointer, the result is a mongrel male with 
all the external characters of the pointer. By coupling this mongrel 

1 Bulletins de la Sociele a^ Anthropologic, 2 e serie, tome iv. See Darwin, Vari- 
ation, etc. , ch. xiii. , for several instances of reversion in plants and animals. 



1 68 Heredity. 



with a pure pointer bitch, pointers were produced, outwardly re- 
sembling the pure pointer. Here, then, we have the phenomena 
of heredity, alternating with atavism, revealing themselves from one 
generation to another in the mixed nature of the mongrel. 

Facts of the same kind occur in many other domesticated races. 
P. Lucas tells of a half-bred Arab mare which gave no sign of her 
noble origin : covered by a stallion of inferior breed, she pro- 
duced a colt possessing a strong likeness to its maternal ancestors. 
The contrary often takes place, and breeders often find instances 
of the inferior type reappear after a long time in stock that has 
been improved by crossing. Atavism presents itself in the silk- 
worm, after more than a hundred generations. 

In man it is a common fact that certain affections, such as 
rheumatism, and especially gout, pass from grandfather to grand- 
son. In the portrait galleries of old families, and in the monu- 
mental bronzes of the neighbouring churches, types of feature 
are often seen which still are repeated from time to time in the 
members of those families. 1 

It is common to find children with their father's or mother's 
nose or mouth. The nose is, perhaps, of all the features of the 
face, the one which is best preserved by heredity. The Bourbon 
nose is well known. P. Lucas tells us that in the beginning of 
this century Dr. Gregory, while visiting at a country house in 
England, the residence of a lady of high family, was struck with 
the resemblance between the nose of his hostess and that of the 
Chancellor of Scotland in the reign of Charles I. He was, there- 
fore, not surprised to learn that the lady was the great-grand- 
daughter of that personage, who died two centuries before ; nor 
is this all. As Dr. Gregory walked in the neighbourhood he 
noticed the same form of nose in several labourers, and he 
learned from the steward that these were also descended from 
the Chancellor, but in illegitimate line. Moreover, the re-appear- 
ance of features is so frequent an occurrence that it has become 
a popular belief. Marryat has turned it to account in his novel, 
Japhet in Search of a Father. 'From Dr. Parsons/ says 
Quatrefages, 2 ' I borrow a case which is doubly interesting, as it 

1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology, § 83. 

2 Unite de FEspece Hiunaine. 



The Laws of Heredity. 169 

is officially vouched for, and as it shows, in the case of a pair of 
negroes, a very singular hereditary disposition. 

' Two negro slaves, living on the same Virginian plantation, 
were married. The wife gave birth to a daughter who was 
perfectly white. On seeing the colour of the child she was seized 
with alarm, and while protesting that she never had intercourse with 
a white man, she tried to hide the infant, and put out the light, 
lest the father should see it. He soon came in, complained of 
the unusual darkness of the room, and asked to see the babe ; 
the mother's fears were increased when she saw the father ap- 
proach with a light, but when he saw the child he appeared 
pleased. A few days afterwards he said to his wife : " You were 
afraid of me because my child was white, but I love her all the 
more on that account. My own father was white, although my 
grandfather and grandmother were as black as you and I. Al- 
though we are come from a country where white men were never 
seen, still there has always been one white child in families related 
to ours." This girl was sold to Admiral Ward when she was 
fifteen years old, was brought by him to London, and exhibited 
before the Royal Society. 

'It appears that phenomena of this nature have occurred even 
in Africa, and Admiral Fleuriot Delangle lately told me of an 
analogous case.' 

Reversional heredity in insanity is well established, as we have 
seen. It is not unusual to find persons descended from insane 
ancestors living to the age of thirty or forty with every sign of 
judgment and reason, who then became insane without any 
assignable cause. Gintrac records that a man who had become 
insane had sons, men of ability, filling public offices with distinc- 
tion. Their children were at first sane, but at the age of twenty 
.gave signs of insanity. Facts like these are recounted by all 
writers on insanity. 

As regards the reversional heredity of talents, character, aptitudes, 
and passions, it is of as frequent occurrence as purely organic 
heredity. In the following table we give some instances of this, 
which have been already treated of in detail in the First Part. 



170 



Heredity. 





Reversionai 


, Heredity. 






1st Generation. 


2nd Generation. 


3rd Generation. 


4th Generation. 


Theodosius 


Arcadius 


Pulcheria 


... 


Scipio 


Cornelia 


The Gracchi 






Charles Martel 


Pepin the Short 


Charlemagne 






Henry I. of 




Henry II. of 






England 


Matilda 


England 






Philippe le Bel 


Isabelle 


Edward III. 






Charles VI. of 




Henry VI. of 






France 


Catherine 


England 






Charles d'Or- 




Marguerite de 




leans 


. . . 


Valois 




Joanna 


Charles V. 


... 


Don Carlos 


Gustavus Vasa 


... 


... 


Gustavus 
Adolphus^ 


Van der Velde 


Van der Velde 


Van der Velde 




Mendelssohn, 




Mendelssohn, 




(philosopher) 


... 


(musician) 


. . . 


Mozart, J. 


Mozart, J. 


Mozart 


. . . 


Beethoven, J. 


Beethoven, J. 


Beethoven, L. 




Lord Chatham 


... 


Lady Hester 








Stanhope 




Darwin, Eras- 




Darwin, 




mus 




Charles 







Re7?iarks. — All the names in the second column held in a latent 
condition the characteristics of the first generation, and trans- 
mitted them to the third. 

The case of Charles VI. of Erance is peculiarly remarkable. 
This mad king gave his daughter Catherine in marriage to his. 
conqueror, Henry V. of England. The fruit of that union was 
the weak and unfortunate Henry VI., the sad victim of the wars 
of the Roses. 



SECTION III. INDIRECT HEREDITY. 

Indirect heredity is ' the representation of collaterals in the 
physical and moral character of the progeny.' We often observe 



The Lazvs of Heredity. 171 

between distant relatives out of the direct line of descent — 
between uncle and nephew, aunt and niece ; granduncle and 
grandnephew, and cousins, even in the remoter degrees — striking 
resemblances of conformation, face, inclinations, passions, cha- 
racter, deformity, and disease. 

But while the two forms of heredity, hitherto considered direct 
heredity and atavism, are generally admitted, that now to be 
discussed has been received with considerable distrust and doubt. 
In the last century, Wollaston, 1 in The Religion of Nature Deli- 
neated, after having shown that a child often more closely re- 
sembles an uncle, an aunt, or a cousin, than it does either of its 
parents, adds : ' Neither uncle, nor aunt, nor cousin have anything 
to do with generation in this instance ; therefore the resemblance 
does not proceed from the act of generation.' In this century 
indirect heredity has been often denied, or doubted. Piorry, in 
his Traite sur VHeredite des Maladies (1840), views it with sus- 
picion. Baillarger, in the work already quoted, brings together one 
hundred and forty-seven cases of mental disease traceable to 
collateral heredity ; but he judged it best to omit them from his 
calculations, for the reason that * heredity, under this indirect 
form, although in most cases quite probable, still does not appear 
to be unquestionable.' 

To explain these facts, which are so well established that it is 
impossible to deny them, these authors have recourse to various 
hypotheses. Some speak of the force of circumstances ; others 
of accident ; others see in them nothing more than coincidence. 
They all agree in finding here, in the last analysis, only the result 
of chance. 

We have already seen, while considering Buckle's objection,, 
what is the value of such an explanation as this, how improbable 
and 'inaccurate it really is. But the doctrine which insists on 
collateral heredity has something better to offer than these negative 
reasons. To show that it is correct, we need only remark that 
indirect heredity is only a form of atavism — a form which is rarer 
and less easy of apprehension than direct atavism, but differing 
from it only in appearance. The nephew resembles the uncle, the 

1 Quoted by Lucas. 



172 Heredity. 



cousin resembles the cousin, because each of them hold some 
characteristic from a common ancestor, who transmitted it to the 
intermediate generations, in whom it has been latent. The 
researches made into the subject of generation during the past 
fifty years, and the discovery of alternate generations, have greatly 
enlarged our view of heredity, and this transmission in collateral 
line has in it nothing wonderful. Hence this form of heredity, 
which was admitted by Burdach and proved by Lucas, no longer 
meets with opposition. We now regard it as nothing more or less 
than a somewhat complicated case of atavism. We treat it here 
under a special heading, merely for the sake of making the whole 
subject plain : in fact, we are but continuing our study of rever- 
sional heredity. However, a few facts will show the identity of 
direct atavism with collateral heredity. 

' I am acquainted/ says Quatrefages, c with a family into which 
married a grand-niece of the illustrious Bailli de Suffren Saint- 
Tropez, the last French commander in the great Indian wars 
against the English, with Hyder Ali for his ally. This lady had 
two sons, the younger of whom, judging from a very fine portrait, 
bore a very striking resemblance to his great-great-uncle, but was 
not at all like his father or mother. The celebrated sailor, there- 
fore, and his great-great-nephew reproduced, with an interval of 
four generations between them, the features of a common ancestor. 
Plainly, atavism acted here in both branches, for in this case there 
is no direct heredity.' 

A well-formed man had two relatives affected with hare-lip ; 
by his first wife he had eleven children, two of them hare-lipped, 
and by his second wife, two who possessed the same deformity. 
- — A woman in whose family were several members hard of 
hearing gave birth to two deaf and dumb boys. — A man whose 
brother and whose aunt were deaf-mutes had five children, one 
■of them deaf and dumb. There are many similar cases of deaf- 
muteness on record. A still more singular case is that of a 
woman come of a family in which there had been several cases of 
hypospadia, and who gave birth to two boys affected with that 
anomaly. 1 

1 Lucas, ii. p. 36. 



The Laws of Heredity. 



173 



Collateral Heredity 



Ancestors. 



Csesar 



Seneca 

Pliny the Elder 

Alexander the Great 
Doria (Andrea) 

Montmorency 

Nassau (Maurice of) 

Mazarin 

Gustavus Adolphus 

Marlborough 

Corneille 

{Juan 
Agustin 
Antonio 
Caracci, Agostino 
Caracci, Annibale 
Bernouilli, Jacques 



Jussieu, Bernard 
Bentham, Jeremy 



Descendants. 



Degree of Kinship. 



Octavius 



Lucan 

Pliny the Younger 

Pyrrhus 
Doria (Felipo) 

Coligni 
Turenne 
Prince Eugene 
Charles XII. 
Berwick 
Fontenelle 



Murillo, Esteban 
Caracci, Luigi 



Jussieu, Laurent 
Bentham, George 



Grandnephew 

(His mother was 

Caesar's niece) 
Nephew 
Nephew (sister's 

son) 
Grandnephew 
Nephew (brother's 

son) 
Nephew 
Nephew 
Grandnephew 
Grandnephew 
Grandnephew 
Nephew (sister's 

son) 

Nephew and cousin 
on mother's side 

First cousins 

Several nephews and 
grand nephews, 
named already in 
the genealogy of 
this family 

Nephew (see 
genealogy) 

Nephew, celebrated 
botanist 



Some authors reckon among cases of collateral heredity those 
where two or more illustrious brothers are found in the same 



1 74 Heredity. 



family, e.g. iEschylus and Cynegirus, the two Boileaus, the two 
Corneilles, the two Van Eycks, the two Van Ostades, the Schlegels, 
the two Cuviers, the two Humboldts, Charles Lamb and his sister, 
Napoleon and his brothers, etc. We do not regard as strictly 
collateral heredity anything save that heredity which passes from 
an ancestor to a descendant. In all the cases just cited, and in 
others like them, it seems to us very probable that this talent 
common to several brothers springs from one common source — 
from some kinsman whose merits lie unnoticed, for merit does not 
belong exclusively to history : or else it is the result of some quiet 
work of nature, for who can tell how and through what metamor- 
phoses she produces talent? We know not, and doubtless we 
should be profoundly surprised if we could understand it. But 
as we wished in the foregoing table to state only incontestable 
facts, we have carefully narrowed our ground. 

SECTION IV. THE HEREDITY OF INFLUENCE. 

We admit that, from the psychological point of view, we are 
sceptical in regard to this form of heredity, especially as regards 
man. It consists in the influence of a former alliance on the 
children born of a subsequent marriage. 

The fact seems to be perfectly out of the order of things. 
Atavism, though it may appear strange at first view, is explained 
t>y the community of blood and of origin ; if the father and 
mother seem to bear absolutely no resemblance to their child ; if 
they are merely the channels of some quality or some feature 
of the ancestors, at least there exists between these and the 
descendants a continuous chain which accounts for the trans- 
mission. Here is nothing of the kind : a child resembles a 
person who has nothing in common with him, save that the person 
was once its mother's husband. 

Still, among the lower and even the higher animals there are facts 
to show that heredity of influence frequently occurs. 

We would mention in the first place Bonnet's well known 
experiments on the aphis. He took a young aphis just after it 
was hatched, isolated it completely, and saw it, in that state of 
undoubted virginity, produce, after twenty-one days, ninety-five 



The Laws of Heredity. 175 

young ones. The aphides thus produced were able themselves to 
produce others. Bonnet placed one apart, and obtained from it 
five successive generations without the aid of a male. An aphis 
of the fifth generation produced young under the same conditions, 
and Bonnet saw this fecundity prolonged through over ten genera- 
tions. This viviparous condition ceased in the autumn, when the 
males begin to appear ; then the aphis becomes oviparous. 

This is a curious example of the influence of the male on a 
whole series of generations, fecundated as it appears by one single 
act. Facts of a like nature occur in certain caterpillars, and in 
some species of molluscae. 

Among the higher animals it is still more easy to study the 
heredity of influence. Burdach 1 gives the following examples. 

When a mare is crossed by an ass and produces a mule, if she 
be afterwards put to a stallion, the colt she then drops will have 
some points of resemblance to the ass. 

An English mare which in 1815 was once covered by a quagga 
gave birth to a mule marked with spots ; she never saw the quagga 
again. In 1817, 181 8, and 1823, she was covered successively by 
three Arab stallions, and produced three brown colts with bands 
like those of the quagga. 

A sow which had had by a wild boar a litter in which the brown 
colour of the sire was predominant, was put, long after his death, 
to boars of domestic breeds ; among the pigs of the second and 
third litters were several having patches of the colour of the wild 
boar. 

If a bitch be once put to a dog of another race, every litter 
of puppies afterwards will include one belonging to that other 
breed, except the first time she be put only to dogs of her own 
breed. 

' It is the same with the human species,' says this physiologist 
< We sometimes find the children of a second marriage resembling 
the former husband, who may be long since dead, and showing a 
closer relation to him, even from the moral point of view, than to 
their true father.' 

Burdach is content with affirming this without citing any instance. 

1 Traite de Physiologic, ii. 243. 



176 Heredity. 



Lucas does the same. He prudently confines himself to observing 
that the fact that children begotten in adultery resemble their 
putative father does not prove the case, as the putative father may 
also be the real father; and that only in case of the husband's 
death or prolonged absence could the fact be absolutely con- 
clusive. I find in Michelet, and repeat with all reserve, an 
assertion which, if admitted, would be a true case of the heredity 
of influence, from the psychological point of view, but it is the 
only case I know. i Madame de Montespau/ says Michelet, 
'had already had a son by M. de Montespau. The first child 
she had by the king — the Due de Maine — resembled only her 
husband : he had his Gascon disposition, his buffoonery. He 
might have passed for the grandson of Zamet, the buffoon/ 1 

When this question of the heredity of influence was discussed 
before the French Anthropological Society, most of the members 
took the negative side. While admitting that cases of it are fre- 
quent among animals, they doubted whether a widow could have 
children resembling her first husband. 2 

We can only repeat what we have already said, and while we do 
not deny a fact which is not at all impossible, and which could 
perhaps be explained, we may consider it so rare, so difficult to 
establish psychologically, that it is useless to insist on it in a study 
of mental heredity. 

We will now endeavour to get a general view of what has been 
said on heredity, and to appreciate the results. 

We first reduced the facts to a few empiric formulas, whicli 
include them all, viz. direct cross heredity, direct heredity in one 
sex, reversional heredity and collateral heredity. These we hold 
to be so many fragments, as it were, of a single law, of which we 
are sensible, though we do not understand it. We now have to 
find this law. We do not speak here of the theoretical and ideal 
law of heredity, which we have already given, but only of an 
empirical law, a more general formula, which includes and explains 
all the others. If we succeed in finding all the ties which bind 
these various formulas together, this simplification of the work 
will render it easier to understand the nature of heredity. 

1 Histoire de France, tome xiii. 

2 Bulletins de la Sociele d* Anthropologie, tome i. p. 291, 



The Laws of Heredity. 177 

We remark, in the first place, that the empiric formulas given 
above are capable of being simplified and reduced under two chief 
heads : immediate and mediate heredity. When we find a child 
resembling its father or mother, the fact appears perfectly simple, 
either because it is so common, or because we judge it to be quite 
natural that like should produce like. But when we see the great- 
grandchild resembling the great-grandfather, or the great nephew 
resembling the great uncle, and this without any intermediate 
stage to explain the resemblance, this case of heredity appears 
to us so strange that many have rejected it. It would then be a 
great point if we could show that this mediate heredity resolves 
itself into the other form. To do this we must make a brief 
digression. 

All naturalists are agreed that no studies are of more advantage 
for them than those of comparative anatomy and comparative 
physiology ; that the knowledge of rudimentary organisms has 
given them a better understanding of organs and functions, and 
that these results have been specially remarkable as regards 
generation. The study of the lower forms of this function has 
greatly enlarged their views, and even entirely modified the ideas 
of scientific men on that subject. Among these discoveries, that 
of alternate generations appears to us, of all others, the best fitted 
to throw light on the subject which now engages our attention. 

In 1818 Chamisso's studies on certain molluscs called biphorae, 
or salpae, led him to the discovery that these animals are alter- 
nately free and aggregated. In the first generation strings of 
biphorae are found, the product of gemmation • in the second, 
solitary biphorae produced from spores ; in the third, the strings 
reappear: so that the young never resemble the parent, but always 
the grand-parent. 

1st generation Aggregated salpae Grandfather 
2nd „ Free „ Father 

3rd „ Aggregated „ Son 

The researches of Saars, Steenstrup, Owen, and Van Beneden, 
show that in some animals the cycle is not limited to three genera- 
tions, but that often it is more extended, and that the resemblance, 
instead of passing from the grandfather to the grandson, passes 
from the great-grandfather to the great-grandson. In those species 

N 



178 Heredity. 



ISt 


generation 


2nd 


?? 


3rd 


?? 


4th 


?? 


5* 


?? 


It is 


not here, 



which propagate by alternate generation, the process is this : an 
ovum produces a simple organism, and this propagates by gem- 
mation • the creatures thus produced resemble neither the parent 
nor the original organism ; next the primitive type reappears, and 
with it the attributes of the two sexes, and propagation by ova. 
Thus, in the medusa, between two perfect types we fmd three, as 
follows : — 

Medusa Great-grandfather 

Ciliated larva Grandfather 

Polyp Father 

Strobila Son 

Medusa Great-grandson 

not here, as in cases of metamorphoses, the same in- 
dividual which passes from the larval to the nymph state, and then 
becomes a perfect adult : here we have several individuals totally 
different from one another. 

The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is, that we 
ordinarily understand heredity in too narrow a sense, looking 
at it only under its immediate form — from one generation to the 
next. But, as we see, it may embrace a much larger cycle. It is 
true that these phenomena are met with only in the lower species, 
and there are no instances of alternate generation among verte- 
brates : but still they show how strong, tenacious, and, so to speak, 
unlimited is heredity. At the same time it gives us a better under- 
standing of atavism. The two facts, indeed, are not identical, and 
we do not at all mean to say that atavism is a form of alternate 
generation, yet the mind readily perceives an analogy between 
them. Reversional heredity in man seems less singular to us 
when we compare it with these orderly cycles ; and on witnessing 
these indisputable facts we can better understand how great is the 
force of heredity. 

At a time when alternate generation was yet unknown, Burdach 
and Girou de Buzareingues were led by their researches to admit 
that there are stronger resemblances between grandfather and grand- 
son, grandmother and granddaughter, than between father and son, 
mother and daughter. This is expressed in the following table. 
(Burdach, Physiologie, ii. 269) : — 



The Laws of Heredity. 



179 



First Generation 
Second Generation 
Third Generation 



Paternal Line Maternal Line 

Grandfather Grandmother Grandfather Grandmother 



son 



father 



daughter 



mother 



son 



daughter 



If we compare this table with that given above for the salpae, it 
is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance. 

But a difficulty still remains. In cases of reversional heredity 
w r here the grandson resembles the grandfather, the grandnephew 
the granduncle — the intermediate stages being totally unlike either 
— how is this resemblance to be explained ? Above all, how can 
it be said, as we have done, that these cases are to be referred to 
immediate heredity ? The reply to this question is to be found in 
one of two hypotheses ; either these resemblances are fortuitous, 
-or else they have been preserved in the latent state by the inter- 
mediate generations, and thus what appears to be mediate heredity 
is really immediate. The first hypothesis cannot be accepted, 
therefore we must hold the second. And this leads us to ask 
what is meant by ' latent characters.' 

One of the best examples of these, says Darwin, is afforded 
by secondary sexual characters. In every female all the secondary 
male characters, and in every male all the secondary female cha- 
racters exist in a latent state, ready to be evolved under certain 
conditions. It is well-known that a large number of female birds 
when old or diseased, or when operated on, partly assume the 
secondary male characters of their species. Waterton gives a 



curious case of a hen which had ceased laying, and had assumed 
the plumage, voice, spurs, and warlike disposition of the cock; 
when opposed to an enemy she would erect her huckles and show 
fight. Thus every character, even to the instinct and manner of 
fighting, must have lain dormant in this hen as long as her ovaria 
continued to act. We see something of an analogous nature in 
the human species. 

On the other hand, with male animals, it is notorious that the 
secondary sexual characters are more or less lost when they are 
subjected to castration, as in the case of capons. 

Thus the secondary characters of each sex lie dormant in the v 



1 8a Heredity 



opposite sex, ready to be evolved under peculiar circumstances. 
' We can thus understand how, for instance, it is possible for a good' 
milking cow to transmit her good qualities through her male off- 
spring to future generations, for we may confidently believe that 
these qualities are present, though latent, in the males of each 
generation. So it is with the game-cock, who can transmit his 
superiority in courage and vigour through his female to his male 
offspring. ?1 

As Darwin remarks, these facts oblige us to admit that certain 
characters, aptitudes, and instincts may remain in the latent state 
in an individual, and even in a series of individuals, while yet we 
are unable to find any trace of their presence ; and on this hypo- 
thesis the transmission of a characteristic from grandfather to grand- 
child, with the apparent omission in the intermediate parent of the 
opposite sex, becomes very plain. 

What has now been said respecting latent characteristics applies 
to a form of heredity of which we have not yet treated specifically, 
heredity occurring at corresponding periods. This, it appears to 
us, may be explained on the hypothesis of latent characteristics 
contained in the individual in the germ state, and which come to 
light only under definite conditions, and at some particular point 
of his development, and this particular moment corresponding 
with a similar moment in the progenitors. Hereditary diseases 
are a good instance of heredity at corresponding periods. Thus, 
chorea, which usually makes its appearance in childhood, con- 
sumption in middle age, gout in old age, are naturally hereditary 
in the same periods. 

Blindness furnishes still more striking instances. In one family 
it was hereditary for three generations, and thirty-seven children 
and grandchildren became blind between their seventeenth and 
eighteenth year. In another instance, a father and his four 
children were all attacked with blindness at the age of twenty-one. 
It is the same with deafness. Two brothers, their father, their 
paternal grandfather, all became deaf at the age of forty. 2 Esquirol 

1 Variation, etc., ii. 

2 Dr. Sedgwick, British and Foreign Medical aitd Chirurgical Review, 1 86 1., 
p. 485. See also Lucas ii. 739, and Darwin Variation, etc., ii. 80. 



The Laws of Heredity. 181 

cites some instances of insanity which made its appearance at the 
same age in several generations. One of these cases is that of a 
grandfather, father, and son, who all committed suicide at about 
the age of fifty \ another is that of a family all of whose members 
became insane at the age of forty. 

Such facts as these — and they are numerous — are a strong argu- 
ment in favour of the hypothesis of latent characteristics, and this 
in turn does much to throw light upon many singular features of 
heredity, as we can show by passing in review all the cases we have 
cited. 

When the child takes equally after father and mother, the case 
needs no explanation, it being the realization of the ideal law, as 
far as that is possible. 

When the child resembles one of its parents to the exclusion of 
the other, this exclusion does not really take place. That parent 
whose influence appears destroyed may reappear in the next 
generation, or later. 

It will be observed that the question already debated, i whether 
heredity is more frequent in one sex or between the two sexes/ 
loses much of its importance when we regard heredity as a cycle. 
When we see the father reappear in the daughter, and finally in 
the grandson, the mother in the son, and finally in the grand- 
daughter, we have no difficulty in believing that each sex reasserts 
its rights, though it does not receive them at first. 

Finally, the hypothesis of latent characteristics gives a plausible 
and simple explanation of all the phenomena of reversion, whether 
in direct or collateral line. 

Still it is evident that these formulas cannot pretend to give a 
complete explanation of a fact so abstruse and so complex as 
hereditary transmission. Our only purpose is to show that the 
term is taken in too narrow a sense when it is restricted to two 
generations, and that the facts seem less strange so soon as we 
grasp them as a whole. We desired also to exhibit the wonderful 
tenacity of heredity. Its law is absolute transmission; and, in spite 
of all the obstacles which tend to weaken or destroy it, it struggles 
on without truce or pause, losing much of its strength as it advances, 
dissipating itself, so to speak, so as to appear no longer to exist. 
And yet, when we see the same characters reappear, sometimes 



1 82 Heredity. 



after a hundred generations, here is indeed matter for reflection- 
It may be said that heredity verifies in its own way the axiom, 
Nothing is lost. With its character of unconquerable firmness, of 
obstinate persistency, it appears to us as one of those many inflex- 
ible bonds by which omnipotent nature imprisons us in necessity. 
We have now to see what attempt has been made to subject 
the facts of heredity to the control of numbers. 



CHAPTER III. 

ESSAYS IN STATISTICS. 
I. 

It is rightly said that there is no perfect ideal science except 
that which is exact, that is to say, submitted to the control of 
number, weight, and measure ; but it is not correct to say that 
there is no science save that which is exact. Yet distinguished 
and even eminent thinkers have maintained this paradox. If we 
are to believe Herschel, ' no branch of human knowledge can be 
considered as having left the state of infancy, if it does not base 
its theories and correct them practically by means of numbers/ 
If this be true, the domain of science at the present day would be 
somewhat narrow. We should have to exclude from it a large 
number of studies which rightly count as scientific, and even to' 
despair of ever bringing them under the conditions of science. 
Admitting, what is probable, that certain branches of physics and 
chemistry, at present refractory, may be subjected to all the strict- 
ness of mathematical formulas, it is very doubtful whether the 
facts of biology, and still more those of psychology and sociology,, 
can ever be so subjected. But it is not therefore necessary to 
exclude them permanently from the domain of science. 

When we compare scientific knowledge with ordinary knowledge, 
such as serves the ordinary needs of life, and when we consider the 
nature of both, we find that they differ only in degree, that science 
is not a mode of knowledge apart and sui generis, employing 
processes exclusively its own, but that it springs from ordinary 
knowledge by a natural evolution, tending always towards more 
and more complex and more and more exact previsions, until 



Essays in Statistics. 183 

finally they attain to a close relation or identity, the most perfect 
end which they can reach. In this process of evolution there are, 
as it seems to us, two principal stages : the first of these, which 
constitutes science properly so called, consists in the employment 
of verification; the second constitutes exact and ideal science, 
and it consists in quantification, or, to avoid neologism, quantita- 
tive determination. 

This we will try to show. 

When we are aware of a large number of phenomena which are 
analogous, that is, at once like and unlike, we endeavour to seize 
the fixed basis in the production of these phenomena — their law. 
But whether this law result from an intuition of genius, or from a 
slow and minute comparison of facts, followed by induction, must 
be submitted to the process of verification, for it has to explain all 
the facts, or at least most of them • and it alone must explain them, 
otherwise it remains an hypothesis. 

Thus every science, in order to become science, passes through 
three stages, the facts, the law, and the verification. First, the 
phenomena are collected and observed, scrutinized, turned over and 
over, placed on the rack of experiment, then from them is drawn 
their generic constant element ; finally, the law thus discovered is 
anew tested by application to facts, just as a seal is verified when 
applied to its impression. This last process — verification — is 
essential. 

Without verification there is no science, because this process 
alone can give to our theories an objective value. It is a 
complete mistake to suppose that what is not true can be 
scientifically established. There are a hundred ways of looking 
at facts, of interpreting, and of generalizing them. Of course, these 
are not ail correct, but who is to decide between them ? In such 
case science gets only the individual, personal opinion of one man, 
his special mode of understanding and accounting for the facts. 
But this is an entirely subjective doctrine, which may indeed be 
science, but if so is science only by accident, nor have we any 
means of knowing that it is science, or any grounds for affirming 
that it is. 

• It may be said, parenthetically, that this is what distinguishes 
metaphysics from science. 



1 84 Heredity. 



When in the works of one of the great philosophers, Aristotle, 
Leibnitz, or Hegel, we read the scheme of some grand doctrine, 
the argument, especially to a novice in such studies, is attractive 
and convincing. The grandeur of the views, the breadth of the 
method, the fruitfulness in results, are all alike charming. On 
reflection some difficulties present themselves : these are the usual 
processes of science, the inductions are legitimate, the deductions 
exact, and yet we are dissatisfied — some infirmity of mind hinders 
an entire assent. The mind is undecided, hesitates between two 
opinions. Yet, for the most part, no cause can be assigned for 
this indecision, although the true reason is that to these doctrines 
verification is wanting, which alone gives perfection to science and 
produces an absolute conviction. When Aristotle reduces every- 
thing in nature to the opposition between the possible and the 
actual ; when Leibnitz reduces all to forces, and Hegel to the 
evolution of ideas, their doctrine is irreproachable for logical 
strength and precision. Yet we dare not assert that these doc- 
trines are true, since verification is impossible. When, in the last 
century, the doctrine of the pre-existence of germs in embryogeny 
was taught, it was acceptable, was logically deduced, perhaps true. 
Experiment alone could decide : and experiment showed it to be 
false by proving epigenesis to be true ; and this last theory has 
been therefore adopted by science. 

Thus, of the three stages to be travelled, metaphysics traverse 
the first two, the facts and the laws, but never reach the third, 
strict verification by the differential method, and not that arbitrary 
and hasty verification which explains some facts without concern 
for those which it overlooks. Thus metaphysics remain beyond 
and above verification, beyond and above science, confined for ever 
to what is subjective. 

But, as has been already said, verification is but the first degree 
in science. The second degree, that which completes the work, is 
quantitative determination. That is the ideal to which all sciences 
aspire, but to which but few attain. 

It is clear that, as the domain of quantity is that of number, 
weight, and measure, every process from the qualitative to the 
quantitative conducts us to more and more precise determinations. 
But how does this transformation of quality into quantity take place, 
and under what conditions ? 



Essays in Statistics. 185 

Hegel somewhere says : ' Quantity is quality suppressed ' — a 
somewhat obscure way of saying that quantity is the canvas on 
which quality is embroidered. To understand this, let us observe, 
in the first place, that what we call quality comes to us originally 
by sensation and feeling, that is to say, under an agreeable or 
disagreeable form, which is consequently subjective. If I feel any 
sensation — that, for instance, of heat — it has the property of affect- 
ing me in a certain way ; but, further, I notice that it may increase, 
or diminish, or vary indefinitely. There is, then, in it a greater 
and a less, a something measurable, or quantity. It is the same 
with all sensations. If, then, in any quality I suppress, by the 
power of thought, all that is agreeable or disagreeable — all that 
is simply affective, all that depends on the constitution of our 
organs — there remains a possibility of indefinite variation to greater 
or less ; in other words, what belongs specially to quality having 
been suppressed, there remains what belongs to quantity. 

Thus under all quality lies quantity. The category of quantity 
is the more general, consequently the more simple, and so the 
more measurable. If, then, we can transform quality into quantity, 
we make quality measurable ; and this transformation is sometimes 
possible. If it be found that some variations of quality in a class 
of phenomena correspond regularly to variations of quantity, then 
every mathematical formula that is applicable to the variable 
quantities may be applied to the corresponding qualities. Thus it 
has been proved by experiment that every variety of sound corre- 
sponds to a distinct and determinable variety of motion. Thus 
the physicist, in regard to light and heat, can eliminate all that is 
purely qualitative, and see only a movement of vibration subject 
to mechanical laws. Thus, too, mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, 
acoustics, and thermology, have gradually become mathematical. 
But this transformation grows, as is natural, more and more 
difficult in proportion as we ascend from simple qualities to com- 
plex existences. In the world of life and thought number is as 
yet powerless, and there is no reason to suppose that it can hold 
dominion there for some time to come. 

We now apply what has been said to the special question of 
heredity. 

We began by collecting a large number of facts belonging to the 



1 86 Heredity. 



domain of physiology, to mental maladies, to animal and human 
psychology and history — facts of various kinds, and adapted for 
showing all the varieties of hereditary transmission. We next 
endeavoured to disengage what is constant in the production of 
these phenomena, and proposed heredity as a biological law, the 
exceptions being, as we shall see, only the results of disturbing 
causes ; and we examined the various forms of this law. We 
believe that this theory may be verified, that it has a scientific 
value. 

The facts which have served to establish the law will serve also 
to verify it, for it is nothing more than a simple generalization. 
Of course it were puerile to suppose that, in the present state of 
physiology, and yet more of psychology, any theory of heredity 
could be final. Nevertheless, we persist in the conviction that the 
laws already recited, being only the expression of facts, are no 
merely subjective view : and this is the important point. 

But it may be possible to go even beyond this, and to submit 
the laws of heredity to a quantitative test. In a recent work, 
entitled Hereditary Genius, the statistical method has been applied 
to this subject. Before giving our opinion on the question, we 
will briefly state the results obtained by this author. 

ii. 
Mr. Galton's book possesses merits and defects somewhat common 
in English works : many figures, a sufficiency of facts, very little 
generalization. His method is purely statistical. His investigations- 
have for their object not heredity in general, nor even psychological 
heredity, but simply this question : Is genius hereditary, and to what 
extent ? Given an illustrious or eminent man, 1 what are the chances 
of his having had an illustrious or eminent father, grandfather, son, 
grandson, brother, etc. ? To answer this question, the author has 



1 'There are,' says he, 'in the British Isles, two millions of male persons 
above the age of fifty. Among these I find 850 that are illustrious, and 500 
eminent. In one million men, therefore, there will be 425 illustrious and 250 
eminent. ' The author declares that he has got these same figures by various 
methods, viz. by consulting the Dictionary of Contemporaries, the necrological 
notices in the Times, etc. This will give an idea of Mr. Galton's method, and 
of his taste for exact research. 



Essays in Statistics. 187 

searched the biographies of great men, drawn out their genealogies, 
traced their relationships, compared the results, struck averages, 
and the following are his conclusions. 

He first entered this field with a work on English Judges from 
1660 to 1865. These judges, always eight in number, constitute 
the highest magistracy in England, and are, as he assures us, 
universally admitted to be exceptional men. Their biography is 
known, as are also their family connections. Here, then, is a fair 
number of facts, which may be grouped together in order to 
examine the results. 

In the course of 205 years there were 286 judges, and among 
these the author has found 112 who had one or more illustrious 
kinsmen. Hence, the probability that a judge has in his family 
one or more illustrious members exceeds the ratio of 1 13 — in itself 
a striking result. 

Passing now from these general results to details, it may be 
shown how this probability diminishes as we pass from relations of 
the first degree (father, son, brother), to relations of the second 
degree (grandfather, uncle, nephew, grandson), and those of the 
third degree (great-grandfather, granduncle, cousin, grandnephew). 

Suppose 100 families of judges, and let N stand for the most 
eminent man in each of them, the number of their illustrious 
kinsmen will on the average be distributed as follows: — Father, 26; 
brother, 35 ; son, 36 ; grandfather, 15 ; uncle, 18; nephew, 19; 
grandson, 1 9 ; great-grandfather, 2 ; granduncle, 4 ; first-cousin, 
11; grandnephew, 17. This statement will be more readily 
understood from the following table : — 

table 1. 
2 great-grandfathers 

15 grandfathers 4 granduncles 

26 fathers 18 uncles 

100 N 35 brothers n cousins-german 

36 sons 19 nephews 

19 grandsons 17 grandnephews 

6 great-grandsons 

If now we pass from this partial work on the judges to broader 
researches, we meet with results of very much the same kind.. 



i88 



Heredity. 



Mr. Galton distributes into seven groups the remarkable men who 
have been the objects of his investigations — statesmen, generals, 
men of letters, men of science, artists, poets, and divines. He 
pursues the method already indicated. He sets out from the 
hypothesis of ioo families studied, modifying his results according 
to circumstances ; for example, when his researches have extended 
to only twenty, twenty-five, or fifty families, he multiplies his 
results by five, four, or two. Thus he is enabled to institute a 
direct comparison between the various groups. These results are 
given in the following table, with the addition of the group already 
considered, that of the judges : — 

TABLE II. 





co 

5> 

tp 

26 

35 
30 

15 

18 

19 

19 

2 

4 
11 

17 
6 


a 

m 

<D 

33 
39 
49 

28 
18 
18 
10 

8 

5 
21 

5 



in 

It 

!-< 
<V 
£j 

<D 

O 

47 
50 
3i 

16 

8 

35 
12 

8 
8 
20 
8 



in 

53 

Id 



<D 

a 

48 
42 
54 

24 

24 

24 

9 

3 

6 

18 
6 

j 


"0 
</> 

26 

47 
60 

14 
16 

23 
9 



5 

16 
16 

7 


co 


p4 


CO 

in 
< 


CO 

s 

28 

36 

40 

20 

40 

4 
16 

4 
4 
8 




in 


Father 

Brother .... 
Son 

Grandfather 

Uncle ..... 
Nephew .... 
Grandson .... 

Great-grandfather 
*Granduncle 
First-cousin 
Grandnephew 
Great-grandson . 


20 
40 
45 

5 
5 

50 
5 



5 


10 



32 
50 
89 

7 

14 
18 

18 



7 
1 




31 

41 
48 

17 
18 

22 
14 

3 

5 

13 

10 

-■» 
3 



We will not follow our author through the extended observations 
he makes on each column and on each of its figures, nor through 
the remarks, often ingenious, often very problematical, which he 
makes with a view to explain whatever differs overmuch from the 
average. There is no question but that, if we omit columns six 
and seven (poets and artists), which present some singular devia- 
tions, we cannot fail to be struck with the resemblance between 
the figures here compared. The impression made by the table 
will be still more striking if we compare the first column, that of 



Essays in Statistics. 



189 



the judges — of the men whose kinships the author has studied 
most closely — with the last column, that which gives the averages, 
that is, with the column which purports to express the law in 
numerical tenris. 

The number of families that has served as the basis of the work 
is about 300, and includes nearly 1000 men of note, of whom 
415 are illustrious. The author thinks that, if there is a law, so 
great a mass of facts ought to bring it to light. This law is given 
in the last column of Table II. The probability that a man of 
mark would have remarkable kinsmen is, for his father, thirty-one 
per cent; brothers, forty-one per cent; sons, forty-eight per cent.,. 
etc. (See Table II., column 9.) 

If we estimate the probability of the kinsmen of illustrious men 
rising to be eminent — and the author shows that eminent men are in 
general less numerous by one half than illustrious men — it will be 
found to be as follows : — 

In the first degree, for the father as one to six ; for each brother 
as one to seven ; for each son as one to four. In the second 
degree, for each of the grandfathers, as one to twenty-five ; uncle, 
one to forty ; nephew, one to forty ; grandson, one to twenty-nine; 
In the third degree, for each cousin-german, one to one hundred ; 
each of the other relatives one to two hundred. 

Eefore we dismiss statistics we must clear up one point. In 
Table II. the word ' father' stands for 'mother/ as well, and 
'brother' includes 'sister'; in a word, the male and female rela- 
tives are indicated by one term. We have now to determine the 
respective positions of the males and females in the eight groups 
of one hundred families each. 



TABLE III. 











t/. 
















c 




[3 














co 

bfl 




a 

CO 




co 
(U 




CO 

3 


CO 

<u 




CO 
CO 

-I— > 


CO 


> 




t— > 


in 





3 


U1 


p4 


< 


5 


< 


Male Line 


74 


64 


68 


74 


71 


94 


8S 


27 


70 


Female Line 


26 


36 

100 


32 
100 


26 


29 





15 


73 


30 


Total 


100 


100 


IOO 


IOO 


IOO 


IOO 


IOO 



190 Heredity. 



On comparing the two averages, seventy for males, thirty for 
females, we cannot fail to be struck by the great difference between 
the two, and the marked preponderance of the male line. The 
author has inquired into the cause of this, but without arriving, as 
he himself admits, at any very satisfactory conclusion. He allows 
but little weight to the hypothesis that in the biographies of great 
men, if their mothers are mentioned, but little is said with regard 
to their other female relations ; for in the case of statesmen and 
great commanders, whose genealogy is well known, the female line 
is likewise very much inferior to the male, as is shown in columns 
two and three of Table III. The author thinks that a more 
satisfactory solution would be to admit that the aunts, sisters, and 
daughters of illustrious men, being accustomed at home to an 
intellectual and moral atmosphere above the common, do not, on 
an average, marry as much as other women ; and he is of opinion 
that his hypothesis would bear the test of facts, though he confesses 
that it is impossible to apply the test. 

in. 

We have now given in a few pages the results of a thick volume 
filled with facts and figures. While regretting again the absence 
of larger views, we must bestow high praise on this taste for exact 
research, this constant aiming at precision, this fear of elevating to 
the rank of objective truths merely subjective impressions. But 
the work does not give what it promises to give. 

It will be noticed in the first place that Mr. Galton's method, 
Toeing chiefly quantitative, differs totally from our own, which is 
chiefly qualitative. In the foregoing chapters we have striven to 
show that by comparison of facts we arrive at a great biological, 
universal law — heredity ; a law that is necessary, invariable, and 
without exception, provided secondary causes do not intervene. 
In the next place, descending from the more to the less general, 
we have examined the various aspects of this law, and have shown 
how the facts of heredity fall under three formulas, or four at the 
most. The laws have been in our view only the simple general- 
ization of facts. 

Mr. Galton proceeds differently ; facts are for him only a matter 
of calculation, he groups them with a view of arriving not at laws, 



Essays in Statistics. 191 

but only at averages. We do not find in his book anything like an 
analytical research into the general formulas of heredity. His 
method is statistical. And here the question arises, What is the 
value of this method, applied to moral facts ? 

Statistics, according to the definition of its professors, is i the 
science of social facts expressed in numerical terms.' Its object 
is to collect and group methodically all moral or social phenomena 
which are susceptible of numerical valuation. Its method consists 
in exposition and induction. The method of exposition, which is 
the simple and the more certain, consists in the calculation of 
averages, and is based on this undoubted truth, that i in an inde- 
finitely protracted series of events, the action of regular and con- 
stant causes must in the long run outweigh that of irregular causes/ 
(Laplace). The inductive method, which is less certain, consists 
in obtaining numerical expressions for social facts, by means of 
arithmetical or algebraic processes applied to a small number of 
observations, and in admitting, on the ground of analogy or prob- 
ability, results not directly established. Mr. Galton employs both 
methods, but chiefly the second. He feels, therefore, confident in 
regard to his method. 

In spite of all the attacks and jokes levelled against- it, I hold 
that statistics is a genuine science, and that it is of high importance. 
But its mistake, in my opinion, is to suppose that it furnishes a 
quantitative determination. As we have seen, science has two 
chief phases: the one where it takes its rise in becoming objec- 
tive; the other where it attains its perfect form in becoming 
quantitative. Statistics halts at the first, while thinking to reach 
the second. 

To see that this is so, in spite of appearances, in spite of columns 
of figures and the imposing array of calculations, we will take a 
moral and social fact of high importance — human liberty. An 
attempt has been made to study it by means of statistical data. 
Quelelet in his Physique Sociale, and after him Buckle in his His- 
tory of Civilization, have used these with great ability. They have 
shown that the amount of crime in general, and of each species of 
crime in particular, varies much less than is supposed ; that in the 
beginning of each year, 'supposing the circumstances to remain the 
same, we might almost predict with certainty the number of crimes 



192 Heredity 



that will be committed in each country during the year. If we 
look into the French criminal reports and compare several years,. 
we shall be surprised to find that various crimes and offences, 
classed under a score of heads, oscillate within very restricted 
limits. The number of suicides, too, is much the same for each 
year ; in five years it varied in London between two hundred and 
thirteen and two hundred and sixty-six. Nay, even occurrences 
w r hich might appear to be governed entirely by chance, and to 
result from pure stupidity, are not without regularity. It has been 
shown that in London and in Paris about the same number of 
letters without an address are posted every year. 

I have no wish to discuss here whether or no we are free agents, 
nor whether that problem can be resolved by the present method. 
My object is only to inquire whether it can lead to quantitative 
determination — that is, to absolute certitude. It is plain that it 
cannot do so. When we are told that the statistical method 
enables us to predict the number of murders, larcenies, suicides, 
marriages, etc., the meaning is that they are foreseen in the gross 
and approximatively ; but in true quantitative knowledge nothing 
is determined in the gross or approximatively. Given a great man 
in a family, does any one imagine that by means of Galton's 
averages we can determine how many illustrious brothers, sons, or 
nephews he will have, with as much certainty as we can calculate 
the day and the hour of an eclipse ? 

It is, therefore, a mistake to fancy that because mathematical 
processes are employed we can arrive at mathematical certainty.. 
The real service rendered by figures is this : there is a multitude 
of scattered facts, which have no visible connection, and appear 
to be perfectly fortuitous. The statistician compares these to- 
gether, and discovers in them uniformities, or, in other words, 
laws. And as from uniformity of effects we may infer uniformity 
of causes ; as from moral and social facts we can ascend to the 
psychological states from which they result, the consequence is 
that statistics can be of service in the study of morals and even of 
psychology. By grouping together certain phenomena of social 
life it gives us a means by which we can verify and check our 
conclusions ; it gives to the purely subjective views of the mind 
the means of acquiring an objective value, and so of passing from 



Essays in Statistics. 193 

the conjectural to the scientific state. It supplies the psychologist 
and the moralist with materials — with observations and experi- 
ments. But this is only the beginning of science, not its perfection. 

And, indeed, how could it be expected, in the present state of 
the moral sciences, that figures could solve every problem ? The 
philosophers of the present century have shown (and the positivist 
school have performed a fair proportion of the work) that the 
sciences are not isolated systems of doctrine, each detached from 
each, but that there exists among them an hierarchical subordina- 
tion, so that the more complex rest on the more simple, and pre- 
suppose them. The mathematical, physical, biological, moral, and 
social sciences represent so many phases of a continuous process, 
which advances from the simple to the complex. Social pheno- 
mena presuppose thought and sensation ; these presuppose life ; life 
presupposes physical and chemical conditions \ physical and chem- 
ical facts presuppose mathematical conditions, time, space, and 
quantity, which are simply the most vague and general conditions 
of existence. In this series of an increasing complexity, and of a 
decreasing comprehensiveness, it would be folly to imagine that 
the superior science could exist before the inferior science were 
constituted. But quantitative determination exists only in mathe- 
matics, and to some extent in physics ; it has not yet penetrated 
into biology ; how, then, could it have attained to the moral and 
social sciences? It is, perhaps, doubtful if it will ever reach them. 
Number is an instrument at once too coarse to unravel the delicate 
texture of these phenomena, and too fragile to penetrate deeply 
into their complicated and multiple nature. With all its apparent 
precision it stops at the surface of things, for it can give us only 
quantity, which is a very unimportant thing as compared with 
quality. 

In short, this statistical research into heredity fails to do what 
it promised. Yet, by comparing facts and grouping figures, it 
arrives at the same result as ourselves, but by another route : it 
establishes psychological heredity, and the objective reality of 
its laws. 



1 94 Heredity. 



CHAPTER IV. 

EXCEPTIONS TO THE LAW OF HEREDITY. 
I. 

The study of the laws of heredity would not be complete with- 
out an examination of the exceptions. Nothing gives a clearer 
notion of the nature of a law, than a knowledge of its anomalies. 

Here, especially, this is indispensable, for the infractions of 
hereditary transmission are so numerous and so striking, that from 
time to time we ask with hesitation if the law exists at all beneath 
the phenomena which conceal it. On considering these difficulties, 
we shall understand why the author of the most famous work 
upon this subject should have set up over against heredity an 
equal and contrary law, that of innateness, which as he considers 
explains all the exceptions. 

Before discussing this hypothesis, and showing how heredity 
may explain the exceptions no less than the regular cases, we will, 
as usual, begin by a statement of facts. 

In the physiological world, these exceptions are readily shown 
in the internal or external structure, the physiognomy, the stature, 
constitution or temperament. 

Though, generally, brothers and sisters have a family likeness, it 
is not rare that there is between them such a diversity of feature 
and countenance that no external sign would indicate their com- 
mon blood. This difference is sometimes seen even in twins. 
Sinibaldi asks ' how it comes that at Rome ugly boors and women 
from the dregs of the people, with hideous features, produce sons 
and daughters of surprising beauty, and of such perfect form that 
their equals are not to be found in the palaces of nobles, or in the 
courts of princes.' * 

Fathers and mothers of erect form, none of whose families have 
ever been misshapen, produce children hunchbacked and de- 
formed. Deformed parents have had perfectly straight children. 
Parents of middle height sometimes beget tall children, while other 



1 Might not this be a fact of atavism ? 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 195 

parents, of good station, in good health, and belonging to families 
of good constitution, beget children of very low stature. A man 
had by his wife eight children, of whom four were dwarfs. Bebe, 
the famous dwarf of King Stanislas, and whose height was thirty- 
three inches, was born in the Vosges of well-formed, vigorous, 
healthy parents. The celebrated Polish gentleman, Borwslaski, 
whose height was twenty-eight inches, had a brother and sister, 
dwarfs like himself, and three other brothers, each five feet six 
inches in stature. 1 

Such idiosyncrasies as the predominance of some one organ, 
one of a viscus, or even of an entire system of organs, likewise 
present curious instances of spontaneity. Family constitutions, as 
P. Lucas remarks, very often begin with individuals, and the most 
rooted constitutions, those that are most general in families, are 
yet not those of all the members. 

We may quote especially, as remarkable facts of spontaneity, 
those called by Zimmermann exceptions in temperament. He 
has gathered several examples; as, for instance, of a man who 
suffered extreme agonies when his nails were clipped \ another 
when his face was washed with a sponge. For some persons coffee 
is an emetic, jalap a constipant. Hachn could not eat more than 
seven or eight strawberries without falling into convulsions, and 
Tissot could not swallow sugar without vomiting. 

But there is no need to cite a large number of such facts, if the 
Teader will bear in mind that peculiarities of organization — con- 
genital or natural varieties — are necessarily exceptions to the law 
of heredity. Thus polydactylism, ectrodactylism, harelip, and all 
deformities of a similar nature, begin by a deviation from the 
specific type. The celebrated case of Edward Lambert, ' the man- 
porcupine/ may be remembered, whose parents were healthy and 
well formed, but he transmitted his singular carapace to his chil- 
dren. Thus we see from facts that heredity imposes its law even 
on its own exceptions. 

Among animals all races which are not due to intercrossing, but 
which spring from spontaneous variation, are at once the result of 
innateness and heredity : of the former for their origin, of the latter 

__ _ : _ 

1 Lucas, i. 108 ; Burdach, ii. 427, 



196 Heredity. 



for their continuance. Thus it is with the hornless bulls, or mochos r 
of the Argentine Republic, with rumpless fowls, bantams, etc. 

If we pass from the physiological to the psychological order we 
shall find no less striking instances of spontaneity. 

Phrenologists have accumulated facts to show that among 
animals, where we see only uniformity of habits, characters, and 
physical aptitudes, there exist between members of the same 
family individual differences, which, as they do not result from 
education, are due to spontaneity. In a litter of wolf cubs taken 
from their dam, says Gall, and which were all brought up in the 
same way, one became tame and gentle like a dog, while the others, 
preserved their natural savagery. 

In twins there sometimes occur extreme contrasts of tastes,, 
propensities, and ideas. This was observed by the ancients : 

Castor gaudet equis, ovo prognatus eodem 
Pugnis. 

What is still more curious is, that double monsters, when they 
survive, may possess diiferent psychical constitutions. Serres ob- 
served this in the case of Ritta and Christina, the female twins of 
Presburg, who were united by the inferior lumbar vertebrae. They 
differed completely in character. One was handsome, gentle, 
sedate, with sensuous character little marked ; the other ugly, ill- 
conditioned, quarrelsome, and of strong passions. Her outbursts 
of rage against her sister, and their disputes became so frequent, 
that in the convent where Cardinal von Saxe-Zeits had placed them r 
the inmates were compelled to give them in charge of a watcher, 
who never left them alone. Notwithstanding these quarrels, they 
lived to the age of twenty-two. 

It has been said that the law of spontaneity cannot be disputed, 
since we see the sons of great men unworthy of them. By what 
singular freak of nature did two fools like Paxalos and Xantippos, 
and a maniac like Clinias, spring from Pericles ? or from the 
upright Aristippos, the infamous Lysimachos? from the grave 
Thucydides, a silly Milesias or a stupid Stephanos? from the 
temperate Phocion, the dissolute Phocus? from Sophocles, Aris- 
tarchos, Socrates, and Themistocles unworthy sons? And the 
like differences are to be found in Roman history : Cicero and his 
son, Germanicus and Caligula, Vespasian and Domitian, Marcus 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 197 

Aurelius and Commodus. In modern history, 'it is enough to 
mention the sons of Henri IV.,' says Lucas, 'of Louis XIV., of 
Cromwell, of Peter the Great ; as also those of La Fontaine, 
Cre'billon, Goethe, and Napoleon.' 1 

We do not, however, accept these cases as facts conclusive of 
spontaneity. The greater part of them are doubtful, and many of 
them are false. It is not enough to say, Such an illustrious man 
has mediocre sons, in order to conclude that therefore heredity is 
at fault. A son who does not inherit from his father, may perfectly 
do so from his mother. As we have already seen, this case is so 
frequent that some authors have regarded it as a rule. 

Among the examples cited by Lucas, there are some in which 
the maternal heredity is clear, as Commodus, Louis XIII., 
Goethe, Napoleon. And it is probable in the case of others in 
the list, especially those taken from Greek history, that if we had 
precise data regarding the wives of those great men, or their 
immediate ancestors, it would be easy to show that these obscure 
or dissolute personages have inherited from their mothers, or of 
their grand-parents. Thus heredity would recover a large number 
of facts which have been wrongfully removed from its domain. 

However, we would not deny that there are exceptions, and 
very important exceptions. But the conclusive way to establish 
them is, not to show that a great man has mediocre children, 
which proves nothing, but that a great man has sprung suddenly 
from an obscure family. Nor is this case rare. ' Often/ says 
Burdach, 'the parents possess very limited intellectual faculties, 
while all their children display abilities of the first order. From 
simple parents often spring those superior men, those minds whose 
influence is felt for thousands of years, and whose presence was a 
need for humanity at the moment when they entered life. The 
greatest men have belonged to lowly, poor, or obscure families.' 

In the negro race, whose lack of capacity is recognized, anthro- 
pologists have noted individuals possessed of remarkable faculties. 
Toussaint L'Ouverture was certainly no ordinary politician. Ac- 
cording to Pritchard, even the stupid Esquimaux and Greenlanders 
can produce men of intelligence. 



1 i- i53. 



198 Heredity. 



A peculiar conformation of certain organs of sense, or a total 
lack of them, are facts at once both of physiological and psych- 
ological spontaneity. There are some persons whose eyes are unable 
to discern some given colour — blue, red, yellow, etc. Others are 
born blind of parents possessed of perfect vision. Deaf-muteness 
in many cases cannot be explained by anything in the parents. 
Physicians cite many examples of families where the parents both 
hear and speak very well, while their children are all born deaf" 
and dumb. Finally, the taste and the smell are sometimes struck 
with anaesthesia, or complete insensibility, which cannot be ex- 
plained by hereditary transmission. 

We will, in conclusion, glance at psychological idiosyncrasies, 
and exceptional mental facts. Psychology, even as physiology, 
has its rare cases, but unfortunately not so much pains have been 
taken to note and describe them. Not to speak of insanity, 
idiocy, or hallucination, which may occur, apparently at least, 
without visible antecedent in the progenitors, there are some 
purely moral states which are met with in a certain class of 
criminals — murderers, robbers, and incendiaries — which, if we 
renounce all prejudices and preconceived opinions, can only be 
regarded as psychological accidents, more painful and not less in- 
curable than those of deaf-muteness and blindness. We have given 
sundry instances of these anomalies, and of their heredity ; but 
they also frequently occur in the shape of isolated and nontrans- 
mitted cases of moral monstrosity. These creatures, as Dr. Lucas 
says, partake only of the form of man; there is in their blood 
somewhat of the tiger and of the brute : they are innocently criminal, 
and sometimes are capable of every crime. x 

11. 
Having shown by facts of every kind that there exist grave 
exceptions to the law of heredity, we have now to explain them. 
As we have seen, it is perfectly clear and unquestionable that 
heredity is the law \ that this cannot be doubted \ and that even 
in those cases which we qualify as exceptions, the exception is 



1 See several instances of moral monstrosity in the work of Dr. Despine 
already quoted, vols. ii. and iii. 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 199 

never more than partial : for even where heredity does not transmit 
the individual characters, it at least transmits the specific characters. 
The question, therefore, is not to ascertain whether heredity is a 
biological law, but whether that law is absolute. As the excep- 
tions are no less unquestionable than the law, and as they must 
necessarily have a cause, there can be but two hypotheses. 

a. We may hold that there is in nature an essential, permanent 
cause, of which the phenomena of spontaneity are the effects — in 
other words, that the biologic fact of generation is governed by 
two laws, one of spontaneity, the other of heredity, the law being 
only the expression of what is constant in the production of 
phenomena — the invariable relation between cause and effect. 
This is the thesis maintained by Dr. Lucas. 

/3. Or we may say that the causes of spontaneity are only acci- 
dental; that it is never more than a chance, the result of the 
fortuitous play and concurrence of natural laws ; but that it is not 
the effect of any distinct and special law. On this theory there 
would be one law of heredity with its exceptions, not two laws, the 
one of heredity, the other of spontaneity. This second thesis is 
our own. But before demonstrating it we must consider the oppo- 
site opinion. 

Of this Dr. Lucas has given a full exposition, applying to it 
philosophic principles. He holds that every living being, con- 
sidered in its origin — that is, in its generation — is the product of 
two laws, which he places both on one plane and on the same 
level. One is the law of spontaneity, by which nature ever 
creates and invents. The other is the law of heredity, by which 
nature ever imitates and repeats herself. The former is the 
principle of diversity, the latter of resemblance. If the former 
stood alone, there would be in the world of life nothing but 
differences infinite in number; if the latter stood alone, we 
should have nothing but absolute resemblances. But taken 
together, these two principles explain how all living things of the 
same species may at the same time resemble one another in their 
specific characteristics, and differ in their individual characteristics. 

If we regard the question here proposed from a metaphysical 
point of view, it cannot be denied that a difficult, and probably an 
insoluble, problem arises. In the middle ages, it was hotly 



200 Heredity. 



debated under the singular titles of ' the problem of individua- 
tion/ of 'hoccity,' and of i haeccity. , This barbarous jargon has 
been ridiculed, but yet, if we turn from words to things, we can- 
not deny that this problem pressed upon the schoolmen, and 
was of paramount importance. Modern philosophy, as it seems 
to us, has been far more concerned with what is general — laws, 
genera, species — than with what is individual. Now, if we are 
hence led to consider what is general as the true reality, the 
logical conclusion is that the individual is only a momentary 
phenomenon, of no importance, the ephemeral result of laws 
which intersect and combine in a thousand ways during the end- 
less evolution of the universe. To use the words of Dr. Lucas, we 
should have to affirm resemblance by rejecting diversity : heredity 
would be the law, spontaneity the exception. If, on the other 
hand, we regard the individual as a reality, as a sort of nomad, 
governed and hemmed in on all sides by the laws of nature, 
but whose essential, impenetrable being is never modified, then 
we set diversity above resemblance, and sacrifice heredity to 
spontaneity. 

We have here undertaken only a study of experimental psych- 
ology, and hence we need not discuss this difficult metaphysical 
problem. We may note, in passing, that if we descend to the 
ground of experience, it is impossible to deny absolutely the exist- 
ence of diversity, for it is demonstrated by facts. There are in 
nature no two beings alike. When we see a large flock of sheep 
we may regard most of them as copies of one another, but the 
practised eye of the shepherd can distinguish each one. The 
courtiers of Alfonso X. sought in vain for two leaves like each 
other. But though diversity exists, we do not believe that it is 
only explicable by a special law. 

If we consider the act of generation under the simplest possible 
conditions, as a single being engendering another, without the 
intervention of any disturbing cause, it is absolutely impossible to 
conceive how the product could differ from the producer ; for 
there is no reason for admitting one deviation rather than another, 
such deviation would be an effect without a cause. Linnaeus' 
aphorism, like produces like, strikes us therefore with all the 
evidence of an axiom. But in reality the process does not take 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 201 

place with such ideal simplicity. In the first place, there are 
ordinarily in the act of generation two sexes, and consequently 
two antagonistic heredities ; this is the first cause of diversity. 
There are, furthermore, accidental causes which are in action at the 
very moment of generation ; and this is another cause of diversity. 
Finally, there are external and internal influences subsequent to 
conception. 

It is clear, says M. Quatrefages, that in every procreation the 
parents import influences which may be ranged in the following 
three orders of facts : their characters may be similar, or opposite, 
or different. In the first case there will be a persistence or an 
augmentation of the characters transmitted \ in the second a 
diminution of them, or a reciprocal neutralization. Suppose two 
parents, one of them presbyopic and the other myopic ; the child 
will have the chance of good sight, in consequence of the conflict 
of opposite influences. In the third case, if the characters are 
simply different, the product is the resultant of the father and 
mother ; that is to say, a new character appears, differing from the 
other two, though due to heredity. Thus, among animals, when 
the parents are of uniform different colours, the progeny very often 
have the skin mottled, parti-coloured, or striped, and consequently 
very different from that of the father and mother. 

Thus heredity, in virtue of its fundamental law, may play the 
part of this force of spontaneity devised by Lucas. We hold that 
there are cases of spontaneity which result from natural causes; 
we do not admit a law of spontaneity. Indeed Lucas's hypothesis 
is contradictory. To understand how little spontaneity possesses 
the character of a law, we need but observe that a law is identical 
with the phenomena it governs, since it is only the expression of 
what in them is permanent and essential, so that it enables us to fore- 
tell them. If the law of heredity may be supposed to be alone in 
operation, without disturbing influences, it may be predicted that 
the product will resemble one of the parents, or both. But sup- 
pose a law of spontaneity, no prediction or provision is any longer 
possible, since anything whatever may occur where diversity is the 
rule. This is permanent disorder. But it is impossible from this 
to deduce a law. A law is declared by a process of abstraction 
and generalization, which cannot be applied to cases which are 



202 Heredity. 



totally diverse, since the very object is to find resemblances and 
to eliminate differences. All scattered facts, all diversities which 
cannot be grouped together, are called anomalies, or facts without 
laws. We may, therefore, speak of facts of spontaneity ; but a law 
of spontaneity is a contradiction in terms. Where, ex hypothesis 
there are no two facts which resemble each other, we may in 
strictness admit the arbitrary intervention of a creative power, 
but in no degree the regular and constant action of a law. 

It is therefore impossible to recognize two antagonistic laws, the 
one heredity, the other spontaneity. And we may add that 
theories of our own day concerning the origin of species and their 
evolution, do not admit of anything like a law of spontaneity. 
Besides selection and heredity, which are the chief factors in this 
transformation, they do, indeed, presuppose what Wallace calls ' the 
tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type;' 
but this tendency, which is the prime source of all variation, is 
owing to the action of surrounding conditions — that is to say, of 
accidental and fortuitous causes — but by no means to an unintelli- 
gible entity such as the hypothetical law of P. Lucas. 

in. 

If, then, there is no law of spontaneity, we have only to recognize 
in the foregoing facts exceptions to the law of heredity. We can 
only explain these by attributing them, not to a single cause, but to 
causes. No doubt it is far simpler to say, whenever heredity is at 
fault, This is the result of spontaneity; spontaneity causes the 
sudden appearance of such a great man — of such a great criminal 
— in a given family ; but the simplicity of the explanation is of little 
account, if it is imaginary. In truth, there is no problem more 
difficult and more complex than that of accounting for these 
exceptions, and of pointing out how heredity may be so trans- 
formed as to become unrecognizable. In the present state of 
physiology and psychology it is impossible to explain these excep- 
tional cases in a complete and satisfactory manner. We get but 
an indistinct view of the explanation. 

The doctrine which regards heredity as the absolute rule, beyond 
which are only anomalies, is very ancient. Aristotle taught it in 
its strictest form. ' He who does not resemble his parents,' says 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 203 

he, 'is a sort of monster, for in him nature departs from her 
specific form • this is the first step in degeneration.' The authors 
who in modern times have adopted this opinion, attribute these 
exceptions to various causes, which may be ranged under three 
heads, according as they act after birth, before birth, or at the 
moment of conception. 

1. We are inclined to assign but little importance to causes 
acting after birth, such as diet, climate, circumstances, education, 
physical and moral influences. They often produce serious effects, 
but it is not possible for them to produce the radical transforma- 
tions we are now considering. This proposition, upheld by 
Bossuet, Helvetius, and by the writers of the eighteenth century, 
resulted from the philosophy of that period. But there is now no 
need to prove that spontaneity is not to be explained by external 
and late-acting causes, and we no longer believe with Helvetius 
that we can manufacture great men by means of education. 

2. The causes anterior to birth, but subsequent to conception, 
are all the physical and moral disturbances of uterine existence — 
all those influences which can act through the mother upon the 
foetus during the period of gestation ; impressions, emotions, 
defective nutrition, effects of imagination. These causes are very 
real, despite the objections of Lucas, who attacks them in order to 
establish his law of spontaneity. We shall see from examples that 
between inconsiderable causes and their effects there exists an 
amazing disproportion. 

3. Finally, there are causes anterior to intra and extra-uterine 
life, which act at the instant of conception. These depend less 
upon the physical and moral natures of the parents than on the 
particular state in which they are at the moment of procreation. 
6 One fact which fully proves the universality of the law of heredity,' 
says M. de Quatrefages, ' is the frequent transmission from parent 
to child of the actual and momentary state of the former at the 
instant of conception. This fact had attracted the attention of 
physicians and philosophers, but it had been exaggerated. They 
went so far as to assert that the past history of the parents was as 
nothing in the constitution of the child, who, according to them, 
depends altogether on the state of the parents at the moment of 
j)rocreation. On the other hand, modern writers had lost sight of 



^04 Heredity. 



this class of phenomena, and P. Lucas did well in calling fresh 
attention to the matter, and citing facts in its favour. 

'It has been long remarked that children begotten in a fit of 
intoxication often present for ever after the characteristic signs of 
that state : obtuse senses, and the almost total absence of the 
intellectual faculties. I had occasion at Toulouse, during my brief 
medical career, to observe a fact of this kind. A couple of 
artisans, man and wife, belonging to families all of whose members 
were of sound mind and body, had four children. The first two of 
these were quiet and intelligent, the third was half-idiotic and 
nearly deaf, and the fourth was like the elder two. From details 
communicated to me by the mother, who was much afflicted by the 
mental state of her child, I learned that it had been conceived 
when the father was brutalized by drink. By itself, this fact would 
have little or no significance, but when added to those collected 
by Lucas, Morel, and others, it is of very great importance.' - 1 In 
fact, it enables us to understand that those transitory states which 
exist at the moment of conception may exert a decisive influence 
on the nature of the being procreated, so that often, where now 
we see only spontaneity, a more perfect knowledge of the causes 
at work would show us heredity. 

But it may be said that the causes classed under the foregoing 
heads explain the exceptions very insufficiently. It may be said : 
We have no hesitation in admitting that heredity, like every other 
law, is subject to conditions; that since these conditions are 
numerous and delicate it is impossible to realize them perfectly, 
and that consequently hereditary transmission always falls far 
beneath its ideal. But is it not going too far to pretend, as you 
do, that transitory, accidental causes can produce in the beings 
that are procreated radical metamorphoses ? We can understand 
how from parents of but mediocre intellect should spring a child 
more intelligent than they; but could a man of genius? How 
could a consummate scoundrel descend from honourable and 
honest parents ? And there is a multitude of such cases. 

Without pretending to give a conclusive answer, we propose to 
set before the reader a certain number of facts and reflections 

1 Quatrefages, Unite de V Esfiece Humaine. 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 205 

which appear to bring under the law of heredity the most refrac- 
tory cases, the most formidable exceptions. By penetrating farther 
into the vital and mental dynamism of man, we shall probably 
have a glimpse of that mysterious elaboration whereby unity 
j)roduces diversity, and causes give rise to effects very dissimilar 
to themselves. We shall then see how heredity seems to disap- 
pear, when it cannot be grasped. 

These obscure causes of deviations from heredity may be 
reduced under two heads : — 

1. Disproportion of effects to causes. 

2. Transformations of heredity. 

IV. 

If we take up any engine of simple structure, such as a win- 
nowing machine, a plough, or a scarifier, and some slight injury 
befalls it, it is probable that it will not be less serviceable : a 
trifling cause produces only trifling effects; effect and cause are 
mutually equivalent, and there is in their relation nothing sur- 
prising. But if the one in question is a complicated engine, such 
as a locomotive, or a factory engine, the case is very different ; 
here an insignificant cause may produce terrible effects : the engine 
may run off the rails, an explosion or a fire may take place. 
Between causes and effects there is a disproportion which experi- 
ence alone reveals. If now we consider, instead of a mechanism 
constructed by the hand of man, those natural mechanisms called 
organisms, where wheelwork and arrangement extend to even the 
minutest details, then the disproportion between effects and causes 
will become enormous ; a drop of prussic acid or the puncture 
of a carbuncle will throw the machine out of order in a few 
hours. Finally, in that mental mechanism — which is still more 
complicated, and where the impulses, tendencies, forces, conscious 
and unconscious processes, do but attain that momentary equili- 
brium which we call the actual state of consciousness — the dispro- 
portion between causes and effects transcends all assignable limits. 
A rush of a little alcoholized blood to the brain, the fumes of 
opium or hasheesh may produce the most surprising results in the 
mental machine. A few drops of belladonna or of henbane give 
rise to fearful visions. A little pus accumulated in the brain, a 



2o6 Heredity. 



lesion so slight that the microscope can scarce detect it, gives rise 
to mental disorganizations called delirium, insanity, monomania. 
In short, we may lay it down as a general truth, solidly based on 
experience, that the more complicated the mechanism, the greater 
the disproportion between accidental causes and their effects. 

The study of anomalies, and the artificial production of mon- 
strosities, afford us convincing proofs of this truth. The researches 
of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and of Dareste have shown that it is 
possible to produce monsters at will, and that these deviations 
from the type are brought about by trifling causes. Hens' eggs 
when set on end, or in any way disarranged, produce monstrous 
chickens. And the same thing occurs if the eggs be shaken, or 
perforated, or partially coated with varnish. Isidore Geoffroy 
Saint-Hilaire shows that women of the poorer class who are 
obliged to work hard during pregnancy, as also unmarried women 
who are forced to conceal their pregnancy, far more frequently 
than other women give birth to monsters. 6 Certain monstrosities/ 
he writes, ' are often caused by lesions which happen to the 
embryo in the uterus or in the ovum. Yet it would seem that 
complex monstrosities are more often determined at a later period 
than at the beginning of embryonic life. This may in part result 
from the fact that a point which suffered injury in the origin of the 
phenomenon, afterwards by its anomalous growth, affects the other 
points of the organism which have afterwards to be developed.' 
His Histoire des Anoi?ialies, to which we would refer the 
reader, is full of curious facts, well fitted to stimulate thought. 
It will be seen that insignificant causes are sufficient to effect 
either a fusion of homologous parts, or inequalities of develop- 
ment — checks to growth 6 which make anomalous beings, in some 
respects, permanent embryos, in which nature has halted half-way. 7 

In presence of such facts, it is not possible to accept futile 
explanations which have only an appearance of simplicity : for 
instance, c As is the effect, so is the cause ; there must exist in the 
cause at least as much as in the effect.' Such explanations are 
available only in very simple cases, or at best in complicated cases 
of a purely mechanical kind. According to a profound remark of 
John Stuart Mill, whenever an effect is the result of sundry causes 
{and nothing is more frequent in nature), we can have two cases : 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 207 

either the effect is produced by mechanical laws or by chemical 
laws. In the case of mechanical laws each cause is found in the 
complex effect, precisely in the same way as though it alone had 
acted : the effect of concurrent causes is exactly the sum of the 
separate effects of each. On the other hand, the chemical com- 
bination of two substances produces a third, the properties of which 
are entirely different from each of the other two, whether taken 
separately or together : thus, a knowledge of the properties of 
sulphur and oxygen does not imply a knowledge of the proper- 
ties of sulphuric acid. 1 But psychological laws are analogous, 
now to mechanical, now to chemical laws. It is even prob- 
able that the greater number of them are chemical. Hence 
it is impossible to proceed by deduction from causes to effects. 
Here experience alone can guide us. It is curious to notice that 
prior to the discoveries of modern chemistry the idea of a total 
dissimilarity between causes and effects, and, what is still more 
striking, between the composite and its component parts, seems to 
have been unknown to science, except perhaps the dreams of 
alchemists about the transmutation of metals. It would surely 
have been a surprise for the scientific men of that epoch had they 
been told, Here is oxygen, a gas without colour or odour, com- 
bustible, and the active agent of all combustion ; and here is 
hydrogen, another and a very different gas. Combine the two in 
definite proportions, and you will get a liquid which may be either 
the water you drink, or the mist on which is painted the rainbow. 
The chemistry of life, by showing us how inorganic matter is trans- 
formed into the plant, the plant into the animal ; how in the 
animal the organic matter returns by death to the inorganic world 
to recommence its course, has revealed to us metamorphoses far 
more astounding than those whose explication we seek. 

We may, then, regard it as certain that in the domain of life 
(including thought) a disproportion often exists between cause 
and effect which cannot be foreseen by reasoning, which is given 
us only by experience, and that it is a wholly gratuitous assertion 
to say, There is too much difference between such a fact and 
such another — between the simplicity of the one and the com- 

1 Mill's Logic, book vi., iv., and book iii., vi. 



2o8 Heredity. 



plexity of the other — to allow of the one being the cause and the 
other the effect. 

This would be the place to consider the famous theory of the 
relations between genius and idiocy and insanity (Moreau of 
Tours, Lelut). In it we should find many arguments for our thesis 
on the disproportion between effects and causes in the physical 
world. But not to dwell on this point, we confess that most of the 
criticisms which have been made on this doctrine do not appear 
very conclusive. If the authors had maintained the identity of 
insanity and genius, as regards the facts which manifest them — as, 
for example, that the lucubrations of a madman are of equal value 
with the works of Newton, or of Goethe — the assertion would be 
so monstrous that we could only regard it as a joke. But what 
have they maintained? That the secondary causes, the organic 
conditions of genius and insanity, seem to be almost identical ; so 
that it is only by reason of accessory circumstances that a certain 
nervous organization produces grand, artistic, or scientific creations 
instead of expending itself on the dreams of a madman. 

Plainly, in order to reach a conclusion on this point we need a 
large number of well-attested, well-interpreted, and well-verified 
facts. But the only arguments that have been brought against this 
thesis are sentimental ones, which possibly are only prejudices - r 
and it is probable that if we knew clearly and scientifically the 
conditions on which genius is produced, we should find much 
to surprise us. 

In our opinion, what has excited most hostility against this 
doctrine is that unconscious materialism which leads us to attach 
so much importance to the organic conditions of phenomena. 
But, even though from the point of view of physiological experi- 
ence there existed between the causes of insanity and those of 
genius only insignificant differences, would there be any less 
difference between the two from the standpoint of psychological 
and social experience ? The analogy between the causes would in 
no degree change the enormous difference between the effects. 
Even were genius the result of a certain state of the cerebral mass, 
it would, nevertheless, still be the most exalted thing in the world. 
The diamond has not lost its value since it has been discovered 
that it is carbon. As John Stuart Mill well says, i It is only for 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 209 

low minds that a great and beautiful object loses its charm by 
losing somewhat of its mystery, and discovering a part of the 
secret process whereby nature has given it birth.' 

If we reflect on the preceding facts, we shall, I think, agree that 
the exceptions to heredity, great as they maybe, are less embarrass- 
ing than at first they seemed. Suppose two children as different as 
possible in psychical constitution : it is probable that if we could 
ascend to the causes of these differences, we should find them very 
simple. But unfortunately there is no mental chemistry by which 
we can transform these probabilities into certainty. 



We will now examine another cause of deviation from hereditary 
type, another source of diversity in the act of generation — the 
metamorphoses or transformations of heredity. This case is more 
simple than the preceding, to which, indeed, it may be referred as 
a species to its genus. Here we can trace the course of heredity, 
because the transition is not now from contrary to contrary, but 
from like to like ; no longer from genius to idiocy, from virtuous 
father to debauched son; but from epilepsy to paralysis, from 
eccentricity to insanity. We might say that in the present case 
there are partial exceptions, and in the preceding case total excep- 
tions, were it not that we are anxious always to keep in view the 
important truth that there is never a total exception to heredity, the 
exceptions to it never going beyond the individual characteristics. 

The study of the transformations of heredity has been made in 
detail by Dr. Moreau, of Tours, in his Psychologie Morbide. To 
that work we refer the reader for particulars, and here extract from 
it only the facts of most interest for psychology. 1 

' It shows an incorrect conception of the law of heredity/ says 
he, 'to look for a return of identical phenomena in each new 
generation. There are some who have refused to subject mental 
faculties to heredity, because they would have the character and 
intelligence of the descendants exactly the same as those of the 
progenitors ; they would have one generation the copy of the 
other that went before it, the father and son presenting the spec- 

1 Physiologic Morbide, pp. ioS — 193. 



2io Heredity. 



tacle of one being — having two births, and each time leading the 
same life, under the same conditions. But it is not in the identity 
of functions, or of organic or intellectual facts that we must seek 
the application of the law of heredity, but at the very fountain- 
head of the organism, in its inmost constitution. A family whose 
head has died insane or epileptic, does not of necessity consist of 
lunatics and epileptics ; but the children may be idiots, paralytics, 
or scrofulous. What the father transmits to the children is not 
insanity, but a vicious constitution which will manifest itself under 
various forms, in epilepsy, hysteria, scrofula, rickets. Thus it is 
that we are to understand hereditary transmission.' 

Dr. Morel, in his Traite des Degenerescences, published at about 
the same time, says in much the same terms : — 

We do not mean exclusively by heredity the very complaint of the 
parents transmitted to the children, with the identical symptoms, 
both physical and moral, observed in the progenitors. By the 
term heredity we understand the transmission of organic dis- 
positions from parents to children. Mad doctors have, perhaps, 
more frequent occasion than others for observing this hereditary 
transmission, as also the various transformations which are ex- 
hibited in the descendants. They are aware that a simple neuro- 
pathic state of the parents may produce in the children an organic 
disposition which will result in mania or melancholy — nervous 
affections which in turn may give rise to more serious degeneracy, 
and terminate in the idiocy or imbecility of those who form the 
last links in the chain of hereditary transmission.' 

Speaking of the young inmates of houses of correction, Dr. 
Legrand du Saulle calls attention to an entire category among 
them of i creatures who are whimsical, irritable, violent, with little 
intelligence, refractory, ungovernable and incorrigible.' These are 
the children c sometimes of old men, blood relations, drunkards, 
epileptics, or lunatics. Sometimes, and this is the more frequent 
case, their father is unknown, and their mother is scrofulous, 
rickety, hysterical, a prostitute, or a lunatic' 1 

In the Psychologie Morbide will be found several cases of the 
transformation of heredity, taken from pathology and from history. 



Gazette des Hopitanx, 6 Oct. 1867. 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 211 

IVIariy of the biographical facts there given are not beyond criti- 
cism, but the following are a few of the most conclusive : — 

Frederick William of Prussia was the victim of a sort of insanity. 
He was an excessive drunkard, eccentric, brutal ; he several times 
attempted to strangle himself, and at last fell into a profound 
hypochondria. He was the father of Frederick the Great. 

' We should seek in vain/ says Dr. Moreau, 'for a more striking 
proof of the relations subsisting between the neuropathic state 
and certain intellectual and affectional states, than in the family of 
Peter the Great. Genius of the highest order, imbecility, virtues 
and vices carried to extremes ; excessive ferocity, ungovernable 
maniacal outbursts, followed by remorse ; habits of debauch, pre- 
mature deaths, epileptic attacks — all these are found united in the 
•Czar Peter, or in his family.' 

The Conde's offer an analogous example. Talent, eccentricity, 
•originality of character, moral perversity, rickets, and insanity, 
•stand side by side, or succeed one another in the most unexpected 
way. 

We may recall what has been already said of the Pitt family. 
Lady Hester Stanhope, the Sibyl of the Lebanon, her father Lord 
Stanhope, her grandfather Lord Chatham, her cousin Lord Camel- 
ford, and Pitt her uncle, were all remarkable for their genius, their 
eccentricities, or their extravagances. 

Tacitus had an idiot son. The gloomy Louis XL was grandson 
of Charles VI., a lunatic. Hoffmann, author of fantastic stories, 
had lunatics in his family, and was himself subject to hallucinations. 

If now we quit the ranks of illustrious men, 1 and consider those 
of common stamp, we shall find in writers on insanity a great 
many cases of transformations of heredity, in all that concerns the 
psychical faculties. The lypemania of parents is seen to become 
a tendency to suicide in the children ; insanity becomes convul- 
sions or epilepsy, scrofula is replaced by rickets, and vice versa. 

Fixed ideas in the progenitors may become in the descendants 
melancholy, taste for meditation, aptitude for the exact sciences, 
energy of will, etc. The mania of progenitors may be 'changed in, 
the descendants into aptitude for the arts, liveliness of imagination, 

1 For further details see Psychologie Morbide, 3 e partie. 



212 Heredity. 



quickness of mind, inconstancy in desires, sudden and variable will. 
Just as real insanity, says Moreau of Tours, may be hereditarily 
reproduced only under the form of eccentricity, may be transmitted 
from progenitors to descendants only in modified form, and in 
more or less mitigated character, so a state of simple eccentricity 
in the parents — a state which is no more than a peculiarity or a 
strangeness of character — may in the children be the origin of 
true insanity. Thus, in these transformations of heredity we some- 
times have the germ attaining its maximum intensity ; and, again,, 
a maximum of activity may revert to the minimum. 

We cannot say what are the causes of these metamorphoses-, 
by what mysterious transmutation nature thus extracts better from 
worse and worse from better ; for the question is beyond the 
present range of science. We cannot tell why a given mode of 
psychic activity is transformed in process of transmission, nor why 
it assumes one form rather than another. Were the solution of 
the problem attainable, it would doubtless reveal some singular 
mysteries. Thus many physiologists have thought that when both 
parents present the same characteristics, heredity may acquire such 
power as to destroy itself. Sedgwick thinks that in this way the 
fact may be explained that two deaf-mute parents oftentimes give 
birth to children that can hear. In truth, we can only ascer- 
tain the facts : but this is quite enough, since the facts show by 
what concurrence of fortuitous circumstances and accidental causes 
nature produces diversity. 

But these metamorphoses, occurring between generation and 
generation, will cause us less surprise if we bear in mind that they 
are also frequent in the same individual. There is no doubt as 
to this point ; pathology supplies countless instances of it. To 
restrict ourselves to mental diseases : ' Madness,' says Esquirol, 
' may affect all forms, either successively or alternatively. Mono- 
mania, mania, and dementia, alternately replace one another in 
the same individual.' Thus a lunatic will pass three months in 
lypemania, the following three months in mania, four months in 
dementia, and so on in succession, now in regular order, anon 
with great variations. A lady, fifty-four years old, is one year lype- 
maniac, and the next year maniacal and hysterical. Often, in the 
same subject convulsions are seen to pass into epilepsy, epilepsy 



Exceptions to the Law of Heredity. 213 

into hysteria, and vice versa; or lypemania will take the place of 
pulmonary consumption, hysteria, hypochondria, epilepsy. 

To sum up briefly what has been said : M. Lemoine, in his 
study on Morbid Psychology, has made a very just criticism on 
this resort to two laws, the one of spontaneity and the other of 
heredity, both reciprocally supplying each other's defects. ' When 
the one is at fault/ says he, 'and puts the system in danger of 
failure, the other is hastily adduced, and everything is set right 
with a word. A madman's son is a madman : the law of heredity 
is invoked to explain his insanity. An idiot is born of parents 
and descends from ancestors who are all of sound body and mind : 
spontaneity is invoked to account for the fact.' We hold, with 
Lemoine, that spontaneity thus understood is an occult quality, an 
.explanation that explains nothing, like the Quia est in eo virtus 
dormitiva. 

But M. Lemoine, speaking of the reduction of spontaneity to 
heredity, adds : ' The reduction of these two laws to one is rather 
ingenious than legitimate, for it appears to me that the law of 
spontaneity should rather absorb the law of heredity. If we 
ascend from generation to generation, we certainly do not always 
find lunatics the children of lunatics, or idiots the children of 
epileptics. But at length we shall be more fortunate; probably 
in the distant past, not so far back as the deluge, we shall find a 
lunatic, or epileptic, or idiot, who is the child of parents and 
.ancestors, sound of mind and body — in short, an idiosyncrasy. 
This idiosyncrasy, whatever it may be, is the starting-point, is the 
pattern after which nature has fashioned all the descending gen- 
erations. In creating this first case of disease, whensoever it 
appeared, nature acted freely. On the contrary, when she trans- 
mits disease as a heritage from fathers to children, she does but 
imitate herself, and copy her own model. The law of spontaneity 
explains the law of heredity, instead of being explained by it, if, 
indeed, it explains anything.' 

To our mind there is here a confusion of two questions, which 
it is important for us to notice : a metaphysical question regarding 
the first cause, and a scientific question concerning secondary 
causes. 

If we take metaphysical and transcendental ground — which we 



214 Heredity. 



do not here propose to do — spontaneity undoubtedly takes prece- 
dence of heredity, since it is clear that the derivative presupposes 
the primitive, and the imitation presupposes the model. 

But if, as now, we take our stand on the ground of science and 
experiment, heredity becomes the only law; for it alone has a 
character of constancy, fixedness ; and because it alone is reducible 
to formulas. Whether we admit with Lamarck the spontaneity of 
a single type, or with Darwin of three or four types, or of a very 
great number with Cuvier, so soon as we quit that region of origins, 
and enter the domain of experience we see that nothing subsists 
except by heredity. 

We have, therefore, to return to our starting-point. Heredity is 
the law. It is no a priori conception, any more than the axiom 7 
like produces like. It is the accumulated and generalized result 
of an innumerable mass of experiences. Facts prove that between 
the partus and the parens there is never anything more than 
individual differences, and that the immense majority of character- 
istics is always inherited. Thus, according to the standpoint which 
Ave take, it is equally true to say that the law of heredity is always 
realized, and that it is never realized. The heredity of the greater 
share of the characteristics is a thing of universal occurrence ; but 
the heredity of the sum of all the characteristics is never found. 
So that heredity, while it is the law, is always the exception. But 
no argument can be drawn from this; for it is a logical necessity 
that where the conditions of a law are not completely realized the 
law cannot attain its ideal. 



PART THIRD. 

THE CAUSES. 

Die Materialisten bemiihen sich zu zeigen dass alle Phoenomene, auch die 
geistigen, physisch sind : mit Recht ; nur sehen sie nicht ein, dass alles Physiche 
andererseits zugleich ein Metaphysisches ist. — Schopenhauer, 



( 2i; ) 



CHAPTER L 

GENERAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND THE MORAL. 

I. 

To inquire into causes we must hazard hypotheses. This cannot 
be avoided; for though science begins with the investigation of 
laws, it is perfected only in the determination of causes. Here, 
too, as in every experimental study, we have only to deal with 
secondary and immediate causes, or, in plainer terms, with in- 
variable antecedents. As far as our purpose is concerned, to 
explain physiological heredity means to define an aggregate of 
conditions, of such a nature that if these conditions are present 
heredity necessarily follows, and when they are wanting heredity 
is invariably wanting. In what follows, therefore, there is no 
question of ultimate causes ; and, without inquiring here whether 
they are accessible or inaccessible to the human mind, we shall 
never speak of them except with the admission that we are 
entering on hypotheses. 

Heredity is only a special case of the great problem of the 
relations between physics and morals, as will more clearly appear 
in the course of this work. We can, however, note in advance, 
in a more precise way, the position of our question, by observing 
that every inquiry into the relations between physics and morals 
necessarily comprises two parts, the influence of the moral on the 
physical, and the influence of the physical on the moral. The pro- 
blem of heredity is concerned only with the latter. The influence 
of physics on morals manifests itself in many ways, of which we 
here consider one only, heredity. With this explanation we can now 
indicate the line of inquiry we shall follow in our study of causes. 

We shall, in the first place, examine in a very general way the 
relations between the physical and the moral, as the problem in 
its most general form necessarily governs all the particular cases. 



2 1 8 Heredity. 



Then, passing from the abstract to the concrete, from theory to 
experience, we shall strive to show that every mental state implies 
a corresponding physical state. 

Thence we shall draw the conclusion that an habitual mental 
state, such as psychological heredity, must have as its condition 
an habitual physical state, such as physiological heredity. 

In the seventeenth century, the question of the ' union of soul 
and body ' was put in a form which rendered it insoluble. It was 
a problem of metaphysics. There were held to be two substance s r 
body and mind ; between the two an abyss. All their character- 
istics were opposed ; then, as was to have been expected, it was 
found impossible to join together again what had been so 
thoroughly sundered. 

Since the time when the progress of physiology showed that the 
nervous system is the physical condition of moral phenomena, and 
that every variation in the one is coupled with a variation in the 
other, researches into the correlation of the physical and the 
moral have had a firm basis, for the reason that it has been 
possible to rest them on a something which is the body, even 
while it is the instrument of the soul. Thus is explained the 
invasion, ever widening since the seventeenth century, of neurology 
into psychology. 

Nor is this all. A further step in progress, which now appears 
to have been made by all partisans of experimental inquiry,, 
consists in substituting for the metaphysical the experimental 
point of view, and for the antithesis of two substances the anti- 
thesis of two groups of phenomena. Hence the problem is no 
longer the relations between body and soul, but the relations 
between a group of phenomena pertaining to the unit which we 
call life, and the group pertaining to the unit called the ego. It is 
true that this way of putting the question simplifies it only by 
making it insoluble ; for when we restrict ourselves to experience,. 
we renounce in advance all ultimate and absolute reason. But as 
the experimental sciences are strictly speaking made up of tw< 
things — facts and hypotheses — and as the human mind has an in- 
vincible tendency always to sacrifice the facts to the hypotheses 
we, if we resist this tendency, run the risk of throwing awa] 
the booty for its shadow. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral 219 

For us, who desire as far as possible to adhere to facts, it is clear 
that we can examine the general relations of the physical and 
moral only under the experimental form. But when we try to 
state the question without any of the prejudices of the average 
mind, which render it equivocal, or of metaphysics, which render 
it insoluble, the only tolerably precise formula we get is this : We 
distinguish in ourselves two groups of phenomena or operations ; 
those in one group are conceived as external, unconscious, subject 
to the twofold condition of space and time ; those in the other as 
conscious, internal, and successive. The correlation which we 
discern between the two groups consists in this, that certain modes 
of existence in one group are the habitual antecedents of certain 
modes of existence in the other; for example, that sum of states 
of consciousness which we call a pain is accompanied by certain 
states of the organism, motion, play of the physiognomy, states of 
the viscera, and vice versa. A little belladonna, opium, or even 
alcohol, introduced into the circulation, produces certain deter- 
minate states of consciousness ; in a word, we observe between 
the two groups of phenomena relations, whether of invariable co- 
existence or of invariable succession. It appears to us that this 
is the only clear and unambiguous way of putting the question with 
which we are now occupied. Finally, when we strive to get a nearer 
view of the opposition between the two groups, we find that the 
higher or psychological group has for its fundamental character con- 
sciousness; and thus the antithesis of physical and moral may 
without too great inaccuracy be regarded as the antithesis of the 
conscious and the unconscious. If, therefore, we should succeed 
in showing that this attribute of consciousness which characterizes 
one of the groups, and which consequently differentiates the two 
groups, does not belong to the higher group so essentially or so 
exclusively as it seems ; if we succeed in showing that operations 
which are considered specially psychological, such as feeling, enjoy- 
ing, suffering, loving, judging, reasoning, willing can in some cases 
be either absolutely or relatively unconscious, then the antithesis 
of physical and moral instead of being absolute would become 
relative, and the problem would present itself under a new aspect. 
With a view to resolve it, we will endeavour to penetrate into the 
mysterious region of the unconscious. 



-2 20 Heredity. 



ii. 

The psychological study of unconscious phenomena dates from 
•scarcely half a century back, and is yet in its first stages. The 
•school of Descartes and that of Locke — that is to say, the whole 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — expressly held that psych- 
ology has the same limits as consciousness, and ends with it. What 
lies without consciousness is remanded to physiology, and between 
the two sciences the line of demarcation is absolute. Consequently, 
all those penumbral phenomena which form the transition from 
clear consciousness to perfect unconsciousness were forgotten, and 
not without injurious consequences, for hence came superficial 
explanations, and insufficient and incomplete views. The nature 
of things cannot be violated with impunity ; and as everything in 
-nature forms series, continuity, insensible transitions, our sharp 
divisions are always false. If we did not lose sight of the fact that 
our subdivisions of universal science into particular sciences, how- 
ever useful and even indispensable, are always artificial and arbi- 
trary on one side or another, we should be saved much idle dis- 
cussion. Thus, as regards the unconscious phenomena which 
pertain at once to physiology and psychology, it makes very little 
difference which of these two sciences is occupied with them, 
provided only that they be studied, and studied well. 

Leibnitz alone in the seventeenth century saw the importance of 
this. Less was not to be expected of the inventor of the infini- 
tesimal calculus, the apologist of the Lex continui in naiura, the 
man who in the highest degree possessed the faculty of insight. 
By his distinction between perception (conscious) and apperception 
(unconscious), he opened up a road on which in our times most 
physiologists and psychologists have somewhat tardily entered. 
There is, however, as yet no comprehensive work on this question, 1 
.and the undertaking would be no light one ; for a psychology of 



1 The completest and most recent work on this subject is Hartmann's 
Philosophy of the Unconscious {Philosophic des Unbewussten, Vcrsuch einer Welt- 
anschauung, Berlin, 1869). The author takes a metaphysical point of view 
close to that of Schelling and Schopenhauer ; but he gives a good number of 
facts, some of which will be hereafter quoted. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 221 

the unconscious would have the same limits, and the same extent 
as ordinary psychology. It would be necessary to show — at least,, 
as we view the matter — that most, if not all, of the operations 
of the soul may be produced under a twofold form ; that there are 
in us two parallel modes of activity, the one conscious, and the 
other unconscious. This study would require a volume. For our 
purpose it will suffice here to show by some positive facts what 
this unconscious activity is, and in what degree it can explain the 
correlation of the physical and the moral. 

Passing from the simple to the composite, from reflex action ta 
unconscious cerebration, we will address our study of the uncon- 
scious to the nerve-centres in the following order, viz. spinal cord, 
rachidian bulb, annular protuberance, cerebellum, cerebral hemi- 
spheres. 

1. The spinal cord is regarded by physiologists under a two- 
fold aspect : as a conducting cord it transmits sensations to the 
brain, and brings back thence motor excitations ; as nerve-centre 
it is the seat of reflex action. Simple reflex action, which we may 
define to be a simple excitation followed by a simple contraction, 
is the first act of automatism, or of unconsciousness, that presents 
itself to us. Reflex action consists essentially in movement in 
a part of the body, called forth by an excitation coming from that 
part, and acting through the intermediary of some nerve-centre 
other than the brain. Proschaska, who was the first to study these 
movements, called them i phenomena of reflection of sensitive im- 
pressions in motor impressions.' 

If we examine here, from our own point of view, the reflex actions 
whereof the spinal cord is the centre, we shall find that their 
distinctive character is that they are automatic, unconscious, and y 
what concerns us far more closely, co-ordinated. ' In those purely 
reflex reactions/ says Luys, ' which, owing to their automatism, 
possess that determined and necessary character which is peculiar to> 
the mechanical contrivances of human industry, everything betrays- 
a sort of predestined consensus between the centripetal impression 
and the centrifugal action which it calls forth, so essential to them 
is it to be regular and co-ordinate.' 1 A few facts will place this in 



1 Recherches sur le Systhne A T erveux, p. 280. 



222 Heredity. 



clearer light. If, after having cut off the head of a frog, we pinch 
any part of its skin, the animal at once begins to move away, with 
the same regularity as though the brain had not been removed. 
Flourens took guinea-pigs, deprived them of the cerebral lobes, 
and then irritated their skin : the animals immediately walked, 
leaped, and trotted about, but when the irritation was discontinued 
they ceased to move. Headless birds, under excitation, can still 
perform with their wings the rhythmic movements of flying. But 
here are some facts more curious still, and more difficult of explan- 
ation. If we take a frog, or a strong and healthy triton, and sub- 
ject it to various experiments; if we touch, pinch, or burn it with 
acetic acid ; and if then, after decapitating the animal, we subject 
it again to the same experiments, it will be seen that the reactions 
are exactly the same ; it will strive to be free of the pain, to shake 
off the acetic acid that is burning it ; it will bring its foot up to the 
part of its body that is irritated, and this movement of the member 
will follow the irritation wherever it may be produced. 1 We can 
hardly say that here the movements are co-ordinated like those of 
a machine ; the acts of the animal are adapted to a special end 
we find in them the characters of intelligence and will, a know- 
ledge and choice of means, since they are as variable as the cause 
which provokes them. 

If, then, these and similar acts were such that both the impres- 
sions which produce them and the acts themselves were perceived 
t>y the animal, would they not be called psychological ? Is there 
not in them all that constitutes an intelligent act, adaptation of 
means to ends, not a general and vague adaptation, but a deter- 
minate adaptation to a determinate end ? In the reflex action we 
find all that constitutes, in some sort, the very groundwork of an 
intelligent act — that is to say, the same series of stages, in the same 
order, with the same relations between them. We have thus in 
the reflex action all that constitutes the psychologic act except 
consciousness. The reflex act, which is physiological, differs in 
nothing from the psychological act, save only in this, that it is with- 
out consciousness. 

1 For further details see Vulpian, Physiologie du Systeme Nerveux, pp. 
41 7 — 428 ; it will there be seen that headless animals act precisely as though 
they had heads. See also Despine, Psychologie Naturdle, tome i. ch. vii. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 223 

On this obscure problem some say that c where there can be no 
consciousness, because the brain is wanting, there is, in spite of 
appearances, only mechanism.' Others say that 'where there is 
clearly selection, reflection, psychical action, there must also be 
consciousness, in spite of appearances.' For the present, we will 
not join in this discussion. A German physiologist, however, 
quoted by Wundt, holds that he has by the following experiment 
proved the absence of all consciousness in the spinal cord. He 
takes two frogs, the one blinded, in order to diminish the number 
of impressions from without, and the other without its head. He 
places them in a vessel containing water at 20 Cent, of tem- 
perature ; the two frogs remain perfectly quiet in their warm bath, 
But he gradually heats the water in the vessel, and then the scene 
changes. The non-decapitated frog appears to be ill at ease, 
changes its place, breathes with difficulty, and its sufferings become 
greater as the temperature rises. At 30 it makes all possible 
efforts to escape; finally, at 33 it dies of tetanic convulsions. In 
the mean time, the headless frog remains quietly in its place ; ' the 
spinal cord slumbers, it does not perceive the danger.' The tem- 
perature goes on rising, the other frog is now dead, and still the 
headless one continues motionless. Finally at 45 ° its carcase rises 
to the surface, 'it is as stiff as a board.' 

Yet, perhaps, as Wundt observes, this experiment is not de- 
cisive ; first, because other experiments have given the opposite 
results. Moreover, the development of consciousness must neces- 
sarily depend on the entire organization, and it is quite possible 
that if a headless animal could live a sufficient length of time 
there would be formed in it a consciousness like that of the lower 
species, which would consist merely of the faculty of appre- 
hending the external world. It would not be correct to say that 
the amphioxus, the 'only one among fishes and vertebrata which 
has a spinal cord without a brain, has no consciousness because 
it has no brain • and if it be admitted that the little ganglia of the 
invertebrata can form a consciousness, the same may hold good 
for the spinal cord. 

But not to insist on a point which cannot here be profitably 
discussed, we go on with our study of the phenomena of uncon- 
sciousness. 



224 Hei'edity. 



2. The grey substance of the medulla oblongata has higher and 
more intelligent functions than those of the spinal cord. It 
governs certain muscular co-ordinated contractions which do not 
depend on the will, and which are often unconscious ; these acts 
are respiration, deglutition, simple exclamation, sneezing, coughing,, 
yawning, and those muscular contractions which constitute the 
play of the physiognomy. 

If to the spinal cord and the medulla oblongata we add the 
annular protuberance, removing all the rest of the encephalon, 
the automatic acts produced are still more remarkable. Animals 
thus treated utter, when pinched, plaintive cries, having the true 
expression of pain. A rat with the cerebral hemispheres removed 
makes a sudden jump when one comes near him, and imitates the 
' spitting ' of an angry cat. Dogs and cats with the cerebral 
lobes removed will, if a decoction of colocynth be poured down 
their throats, make grimaces with their lips as though they would 
free themselves from a disagreeable sensation. Thus, then, the 
nerve-centres we have enumerated produce, in the absence of the 
brain, unconscious sensations of pleasure and of pain, of hearing 
and of taste. 

If to these we add the tubercula quadrigemina we shall have 
unconscious visual sensations. A pigeon with the cerebral hemi- 
spheres removed makes a movement of the head as though to 
avoid a danger that threatens, when the fist is suddenly brought 
close to it. An experiment first made by Longet shows that the 
pigeon follows with its head the motions given to a lighted 
candle. 

All these phenomena are of the same nature as those which 
depend on the spinal cord, and suggest the same reflections. 
They are intelligent — that is to say, adapted to an end. At bottom 
they are identical with physiological acts, and differ from them 
only by this one character, that they are unconscious, or reputed 1 
as such. 

3. The same remark also applies to the automatic phenomena- 
dependent on the cerebellum. The function of that organ seems 
to consist in co-ordinating the muscular contractions which produce 
the various movements — 'a co-ordination which requires infinite 
science, that is utterly ignored by the mind.' ' I have often,' 



Relations between the Physical and the Mo7'aL 225 

says Despine, 1 ' admired this automatic science, when seeing a 
dog follow his master's carriage, leaping in front of the horse, 
passing between the wheels, while they are revolving at every rate 
of speed ; and all this without ever being touched either by the 
wheels or by the' horse's feet. What mathematical precision 
there must be in the action of the numerous muscles which 
concur to execute all these movements ! It all occurs without 
the volition of the animal, nor does he know how he performs it. 
In man this automatic science strikes us as more wonderful still. 
Instrumentalists whose cerebellum is imperfect never can per- 
form a piece of music as they think it ought to be performed. 
Some highly intelligent men are very awkward, while other men 
of very moderate intelligence are possessed of very remarkable 
dexterity; in point of address some inferior races may equal 
superior ones. To be a good horseman, a good juggler, a good 
rope-dancer, a good shot, the commonest grade of intelligence 
suffices ) but there is need of very perfect automatic organs. It 
is not the shape of the hand that gives dexterity ; some hands 
that are very well formed are yet very unskilful, while some ill- 
shaped hands perform prodigies of dexterity. The hand and the 
fingers are only the instrument that operates.' 

To all these facts, which appear to denote an unconscious 
intelligence seated in the organism, and which we have referred 
to distinct nerve-centres, we might add others no less curious ; 
such as the tendency by which the living thing attains its typical 
form, or, in case of lesions, restores and completes it. Some 
physiologists, Burdach for instance, see in this an unconscious 
instinct of individual conservation ; but most authors simply state 
these facts without explanation. We will not insist upon them, 
so that we may the sooner arrive at the unconscious operations 
of the brain. 

4. Automatism was long considered as appertaining exclusively 
to the spinal cord and to the secondary nerve-centres. In 
England, it has been chiefly the researches of Carpenter and Lay- 
cock which have proved that the brain also possesses an auto- 
matic activity of its own, which they have called ' unconscious 

1 Psychologie Naturelle, vol. i. p. 485. 



226 Heredity. 



cerebration/ or, l the souPs preconscious activity.' Here we touch 
the quick of our subject, since the brain, or at least the ganglionic 
matter spread over the surface of the hemispheres, is the seat of 
the highest and most complex psychological operations. But, as 
we have already remarked, there is no mode of mental activity 
which may not be produced under its unconscious form. Facts 
will prove this. 

But how are we to study these phenomena if they are with- 
drawn from our direct observation ? if, on the one hand, they are 
cognizable only by the consciousness, and if, on the other, they 
lie outside of consciousness ? We do not profess here to sketch a 
method whose processes vary, of necessity, according to the cases. 
Most commonly we reach them by induction, advancing from the 
known to the unknown. We arrive at the unconscious by ascer- 
taining the influence it may have on conscious life, just as we 
discover an invisible planet by the perturbations it produces. We 
infer the unconscious from its well-ascertained conscious results. 
If I am a somnambulist, and rise from my bed at night, dress 
myself, and sit me down at a table to write verses, I must, when 
I wake next day, admit that I am the author, because I see them 
in my own handwriting, though I may have no recollection of 
what has occurred; in other words, I infer, from the material 
result before my eyes, that my mind must have performed, in a 
certain interval of time, a certain number of very complicated 
operations which differ from ordinary psychological work in only 
one point, viz. that they are effected without consciousness. 

On entering upon the study of the facts, we meet with a group 
of morbid states, comprising natural and artificial somnambulism, 
ecstasy, catalepsy — all facts so common that there is no need to 
describe them. ' There are well-authenticated cases in which auto- 
matic action of this kind has not only produced results perfect of 
themselves, but has produced them by a shorter and more direct 
process than would have been thought possible in the waking state. 
The absence of every distracting influence seems to favour the 
uninterrupted action of the mental mechanism, if the phrase is 
permissible.' (Carpenter.) A thing not so well known is, that in 
a certain form of epilepsy the patient often goes on doing auto- 
matically, though consciousness is abolished, what he was doing at 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 227 

the instant of the attack. Schroeder van der Kolk knew a woman 
who went on eating, drinking, or working, and who, on coming to 
her senses, had no recollection of what she had done. Trous- 
seau 1 speaks of a young musician subject to epileptic vertigo, 
attacks of which lasted from ten to fifteen minutes, and who, 
during that interval, would continue playing the violin uncon- 
sciously. An architect who had long been subject to epilepsy was 
not afraid to mount the highest scaffoldings, though he had often 
had attacks when walking on narrow planks at great heights. 
No accident ever befell him ; when the attack came on he ran 
swiftly along the scaffolds, shouting his own name at the top of 
his voice. A few seconds later he would come to himself, and 
would then give his orders to the workmen. He would have 
had no idea of the strange way in which he had acted, had he 
not been told of it. 

If now we pass from the morbid to the normal state, and review 
all the forms of mental activity, distinguishing each after the man- 
ner of analytical psychology, we shall see that for every conscious 
form there is a corresponding unconscious one. 

The first forms of unconscious life must be sought for in the 
foetal life — a subject full of obscurity, and very little studied from 
the psychological point of view. We may hold, with Bichat and 
Cabanis, that though the external senses are in the fcetus in a state 
of torpor, and though in the constant temperature of the amniotic 
fluid the general sensibility of the fcetus is almost null, still its 
brain has already exercised perception and will, as seems to be 
evidenced by the movements of the fcetus during the last months 
of pregnancy. 

But to take simply the adult man or animal. We shall first find, 
at the common frontiers of physiology and psychology, a notable 
group, that of the instincts, which of themselves alone constitute 
the psychological life of a great number of animals. If we con- 
sider these as composite reflex actions, the instincts form, as we 
have seen, the transition from simple reflex action to memory. 

With instinct we may couple habit, which resembles it in many 
respects, and is no less wonderful. Habit constitutes a true return 

1 Trousseau, Zefons Cliniques, i. 59, — in vol. ii. are cases no less curious. 



228 Heredity. 



to automatism, and it is never perfect unless when it is entirely 
unconscious. 

These facts have long been recognized ; but here are some that 
have received less attention. In the group of the phenomena of 
sensibility we discern, both from their effects and directly, the 
existence of unconscious pleasure and pain, whence come our 
causeless joy and sadness. The instincts peculiar to man, such as 
modesty and shame, maternal love, presentiments, secret sym- 
pathies and antipathies, only become conscious exceptionally and 
incidentally ; yet we feel that all these instincts spring from the 
depths of our being, from the dim region of the unconscious. 
Nowhere is this fact more striking than in the sexual instinct, which,, 
both in man and in animals, takes its rise prior to all experience. 
This instinct, which perhaps even determines individual selection, 
where it takes place, caused Schopenhauer to maintain ingeniously 
that love is the tendency of specific conservation, and that we must 
recognize ' in this daemon a certain unconscious idea of species/ 
In a word, are not the intellectual sentiments (those of the true 
and the false) an unconscious, half-perceived cognition? Every 
cognition is in its origin instinctive. The experimental method was 
instinctively anticipated by the alchemists before it was clearly per- 
ceived by Galileo and Bacon. What in medicine and the sciences 
is denominated diagnosis is an unconscious cognition. 

If we pass from phenomena of sensibility to intellectual oper- 
ations, we shall see that every mode of intelligence has its- 
unconscious form. In the first place, the difference between con- 
scious perception and unconscious (or rather semi-conscious) 
impression is well known ; the sensorial nerve-centres can receive 
and preserve impressions which either never attain the state of 
consciousness or do so only after a time. Perception can exist 
only by the aid of two principal forms, space and time, and by 
certain processes which ultimately determine the position of the 
object in a certain point in space; and thus the unconscious serves 
as support and condition for conscious perception. We need say 
nothing of memory, which is altogether a form of unconsciousness, 
recollection being nothing but the transition from unconsciousness 
to consciousness. The latent association of ideas is a pheno- 
menon of the same kind. The mind goes through a series of 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 229 

operations of which consciousness holds only the two extremities. 
Finally, the highest creations of the imagination spring from the 
unconscious. Every great inventor, artist, man of science, artificer, 
feels within him an inspiration, an involuntary invasion, as it were, 
coming out of the depths of his being, but which is, as has been 
said, impersonal. All that comes under consciousness is results 
and not processes. The difference between talent and genius is the 
difference between the conscious and the unconscious. Artists, 
prophets, martyrs, mystics, all those who in any degree have felt 
the furor poeticus, have ever acknowledged their subjection to a 
higher power than their own ego, and this power is the unconscious 
overlapping the submerged consciousness. 

The mystics of every country and of every age put faith only 
in their unconscious knowledge, and it is not to be denied that 
they have brought back from the world of unconsciousness high 
and entrancing visions. 

The logical operations of the intellect, namely, judgment and 
ratiocination, may also be performed without consciousness. It is 
a known fact that after a night's rest the mind finds the materials 
of its work classed with an order that we should never have been 
able to give them, with all our industry and all our dexterity. Men 
of science of the first rank commonly foresee results by quick 
intuition — a thing which can only come from unconscious ratio- 
cination. ',The art of divining, without which it is almost impossible 
to advance ' (Leibnitz), is nothing but this. Every man, however 
.mediocre the quality of his mind, is unconsciously guided by a 
hidden logic. A proper study of the unconscious would throw 
some light on the question of ' innate ' ideas, and on those fun- 
damental truths which we do not hesitate to admit under the 
unconscious form ; and would, in particular, explain the induction 
which presupposes a belief more or less vague in the uniformity of 
the laws of nature. Probably the difference between deduction 
and induction is only the difference between the conscious and the 
unconscious, so that, outside consciousness, the two processes 
would constitute only one, and that one would be deductive. 

As for the will, it derives ultimately from character, and the root 
of character is in the unconscious. And, to our mind, it is 
this that makes the question of the freedom of the will insoluble, 



230 Heredity 



consciousness being incapable of giving us all the elements of the 
problem. We know motives and acts ; but that which causes the 
possible to become the actual is unconscious. 

' Languages/ says Turgot, c are not the work of self-conscious 
reason.' If his age had understood this as he did, it would have 
discussed the origin of language less; above all, it would not have 
seen in it a conscious creation. The source of language is in the 
unconscious. ' Without language it is impossible to conceive the 
philosophic consciousness, or even human consciousness, and 
hence it is that it has never been possible that the foundations of 
language should be laid in a conscious manner. Still, the more 
we analyze language, the more clearly we perceive that it exceeds 
in depth the most conscious productions of the mind. It is with 
language as with all organic beings. We fancy that these beings 
come into existence, being produced by a blind force, and yet we 
cannot deny the intentional wisdom that presides over the forma- 
tion of each one of them.' 1 Many philosophers of our day have 
in other terms pronounced the same opinion as to the unconscious 
origin of language. 

In fact, we meet with a final manifestation of the unconscious in 
sociological phenomena, in history. A people arrives at conscious- 
ness only as it becomes civilized ; perhaps it was only in the last 
century that that ideal state was reached wherein the human race 
has clear consciousness of itself and of its history. Among primi- 
tive peoples, however, societies are formed, and a certain division 
of political powers and of vocations is made, though without any 
definite consciousness of the end or of the means. From this the 
consciousness of the species afterwards springs by degrees. The 
process of development is the same in the species as in the indi- 
vidual ; compare Homer with Aristotle ; Gregory of Tours with 
Montesquieu. Here, as everywhere, consciousness springs from the 
unconscious and presupposes it. 

We have now, in the compass of a few pages, given a sketch of 
a question which would require a volume ; but, brief as it is, it is 
enough for our purpose. To sum up, we have seen that there is 
no psychological phenomenon, simple or complex, high or low, 

1 Schelling, Einleitung in die Philosophic der Mythologie. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 231 

normal or morbid, which may not occur under an unconscious 
form. In a word, we find in ourselves or in others, and we con- 
clude that there exists in animals, a great number of acts, often 
complex, which, as a rule, are willed, deliberated upon, conceived, 
felt — in short, accompanied by consciousness ; that is, by a more or 
less clear knowledge (1) of the means, and (2) of the end. In 
some cases the consciousness of the end to be attained, and of the 
means to be employed disappears : yet we know that the end has 
been attained, though we know it only through the effect produced. 
Such acts are unconscious. 

Two hypotheses only are possible to interpret these facts. 

1. It may be said that consciousness is the habitual, though not 
indispensable, accompaniment of mental life ; that the intellect 
is by nature unconscious : that its essence consists in the co-ordina- 
tion of means, and its progress in a more and more complex, a 
more and more perfect, co-ordination ; but that consciousness is 
only a secondary phenomenon, though of the highest importance ; 
somewhat as the brain, which is the noblest of all the organs, is 
nevertheless only a complementary organ, superadded to the rest, 
though it is the noblest of all. This thesis has even been applied 
to physiology, when it has been said that the unconscious pheno- 
mena presuppose only nerve-currents terminating in the secondary 
centres (rachidian bulb, annular protuberance, tubercula quadri- 
gemina, etc.), while the conscious phenomena presuppose a second 
series of currents terminating in the ganglionic substance of the 
brain. In this way consciousness would be a fact of a higher 
order, but not indispensable to psychological life, which could 
subsist without it under all its forms. Consciousness w r ould be 
like the intermittent flashes from the furnace of an engine, which 
allow us to see glimpses of a marvellous mechanism, but which do 
not constitute the mechanism. 

2. On the other hand, consciousness may be regarded as being 
pre-eminently the psychological fact. The operation which con- 
stitutes consciousness (Bewusstwerden), never being identical with 
itself through two consecutive moments, possesses every possible 
degree of clearness and of intensity ; consciousness increases and 
diminishes, but in its progressive decrease it never reaches zero : 
what we call the unconscious is only a minimum of consciousness. 



232 Heredity, 



The brain is the seat and the condition of clear consciousness; but 
every secondary nerve-centre and every ganglion is conscious after 
its own fashion. This view, which is also based on physiology, 
holds that, inasmuch as sensibility is a histological, not a morpho- 
logical property, wherever there is a nerve-substance there must 
also be a more or less vague consciousness, and that the general 
consciousness of the creature is composed of these infinitesimal 
quantities, which are lost in it even while they constitute it. 

We need not decide between these two hypotheses, nor are we 
competent to do so. We would merely show that, as far as they 
touch upon our subject, they both lead to the same conclusion. 

We have already said that the antithesis of the physical and the 
moral, considered in the phenomenal order, resolves itself into the 
contrast of the conscious with the unconscious, and we now see 
that, as we bring both groups together, the one encroaches on the 
other, so that it is impossible to say where the conscious ends and 
where the unconscious begins. For the present, we only observe 
that it would be premature to draw a conclusion before we have 
studied the purely psychological — that is, the conscious — pheno- 
menon. This we now proceed to do. 

in. 

We therefore now pass from phenomena of a mixed nature — half- 
physiological and half-psychological — to those which properly 
constitute intellectual life. But we must not forget that here we 
are concerned only with phenomena \ we know not what the mind 
is in itself, nor need we discuss that question here. We have 
merely to inquire whether psychological life may not in the last 
analysis be brought down to a few irreducible elements, given, or 
at least suggested, by experience, and whether there is any relation 
between the primordial facts of mental life and the primordial 
facts of physical life. Leaving, therefore, all questions as to the 
substance of the mind, which concern metaphysics, and all details 
as to its faculties and phenomena, which concern descriptive 
psychology, let us see to what ultimate form we may reduce the 
fact of conscience, or thought, considered as a phenomenon. 

It may be said generally, that to think is to unify and to 
diversify; to reduce phenomenal plurality to the unity of the 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 233 

subject, and to realize the unity of the subject in a phenomenal 
plurality. Every act of thinking is definitely reducible to a per- 
ception of either differences or resemblances, that is to say, it 
resolves one into many, or reduces many into one. This double 
process of analysis and synthesis can be infinitely repeated and 
complicated, but it underlies all our intellectual operations, what- 
ever they may be. Contemporary psychologists have well shown 
that on comparing the phenomena of intelligence we find a true 
unity of composition, and that this essential unity of all intel- 
lectual phenomena consists in this, that always and everywhere we 
are integrating or disintegrating something. Their studies, which 
we need not detail here, enable us to pass from these rather vague 
considerations to a more precise knowledge of the fact of con- 
sciousness in its ultimate form. 

Since in every act of thinking there are necessarily two ele- 
ments, plurality and unity, we will examine these in order that 
we may see to what they are ultimately reducible. 

1. We will begin with the dividing element of thought. Every 
one will readily admit that if we start from some very composite 
mental state — for instance, from the idea of a certain social 
system, or of a certain form of government — and then proceed 
by continuous analysis, constantly passing from the more to the 
less complex, from the less complex to the simple, from the 
simple to the most simple, we must, in traversing this descending 
series, finally arrive at primitive elements. Thus we are able to 
resolve our system into a sum of ratiocinations and relations, each 
ratiocination into a sum of judgments and relations, each judg- 
ment into a sum of ideas and relations, each idea into a number 
of images or of concrete forms from which it is drawn, and each 
image and concrete form into internal or external, subjective or 
objective, sensations. Sensation, therefore, would appear to be the 
primitive element upon which all rests, the molecule to which this 
complicated diversity may be reduced. 

The researches of physicists and of physiologists, however, have 
led some psychologists to ask whether sensation is indeed, as it 
appears to be, an irreducible phenomenon, and the reply has been 
in the negative. When treating of the so-called simple sensations 
of sound, colour, taste, smell, they found themselves in the same 



234 Heredity. 



condition as chemistry once was when dealing with bodies sup- 
posed to be simple. Analysis has shown that the so-called primi- 
tive sensations are themselves composite. For the analysis of these 
sensations we refer the reader to recent treatises on psychology, 
giving here only a single example. 

We take some sensation usually esteemed irreducible; for in- 
stance, that of a musical note. It is known that if we cause a 
body to vibrate, and that the vibrations do not exceed sixteen in 
the second, we perceive a regular succession of identical sensations, 
of which each is a separate and distinct sound. But if the vibra- 
tions grow more rapid, these sounds, instead of being each 
apprehended as a separate state of consciousness, blend into one 
continuous consciousness, and that is the musical note. If the 
rapidity of the vibrations be increased, the quality of the sound 
varies, becoming sharper; and if the rapidity goes on steadily 
increasing, it becomes at length so sharp that soon it becomes 
inappreciable as sound. Nor is this all ; the researches of Helm- 
holtz have shown that the differences of tone between instruments 
(as the violin, the horn, and the flute) are owing to the fact that 
different harmonies are added to the fundamental note. These 
differences of sensations, known as differences of tone, are there- 
fore due to the simultaneous integration of other series, having 
other degrees of integration, with the original series. In plainer 
terms, the fusion of these primary noises in a single state of 
consciousness produces the sensation of a musical note ; and this 
fusion, combined with the principal note of other less intense 
vibrations, produces differences of tone. 

This analysis, summary and insufficient as it is, will enable us 
to understand how illusory is the apparent simplicity of the phe- 
nomenon we call sensation. The same is to be said of colours, 
tastes, odours, and in general of all sensations, though with some 
of them the analysis could not be carried so far. 1 If, then, 
sensation is a composite phenomenon, it may, perhaps, be pos- 
sible to discover its primary element. 

The most recent work written on this subject is Herbert 



1 For details, see Helmholtz' Physiological Optics (Lehre von der Tonemp fin- 
dung ) ; Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, § 60. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 235 

Spencer's Psychology. Pushing his analysis beyond the very limits- 
of consciousness to a final element, which is rather felt than seen, 
he finds ' the unit of consciousness ' in what he terms a ' nervous 
shock.' If we examine our various sensations, we shall see that 
in spite of their specific differences they possess one thing in 
common — the nervous shock which constitutes the basis of them 
all, and to which they all appear to be reducible. It is not possible to 
say precisely wherein consists this ultimate element, though a few 
examples may help us to form an approximate idea of it. Thus r 
the effect produced in us by a crash which has no appreciable 
duration is a nervous shock. An electrical discharge traversing 
the body, and a flash of lightning striking the eye, resemble 
a nervous shock. The state of consciousness thus produced is in 
quality like that produced by a blow (leaving out of consideration 
the consequent pain), so that this may be taken for the primitive 
and typical form of a nervous shock. ' It is possible — may we 
not even say probable — ' writes Herbert Spencer, 'that some- 
thing of the same order as that which we call nervous shock is 
the ultimate unit of consciousness ; and that all the unlikelinesses 
among our feelings result from unlike modes of integration of 
the ultimate unit.' * 

We would observe, with the same author, that there is a perfect 
agreement between this view and the well-known character of 
nervous action. Experience shows that the nerve-current is inter- 
mittent, that it consists of undulations. The external stimulus 
does not act continuously on the sensitive centre, but sends up to 
it, as it were, a series of pulsations, so that, objectively, this phe- 
nomenon may be said to resemble what is subjectively called a 
nervous shock. 

It does not seem possible, in the analysis of consciousness, to 
push any farther the reduction of what we have called diversity,, 
for the nervous shock is hardly a state of consciousness. From 
the synthesis of these shocks would come states of consciousness 
properly so-called — that is to say, sensations and sentiments ; and 
then by syntheses of sensations and sentiments, and by associations 
of images, ideas, and relations, is built the whole edifice of our 
cognitions. 

1 Herbert Spencer, Psychology, ib. 



2 36 Heredity. 



2. In the whole of the foregoing we have constantly spoken of 
synthesis, integration, fusion, association. How is this operation 
performed which reduces diversity to unity ? Does it result from 
the elements themselves? Are these syntheses formed after the 
manner of chemical combinations, and according to laws depen- 
dent on the quantity and the quality of the combined elements ? 
Must we deduce the unity of the facts of consciousness from the 
unity of the vital phenomena, and look for the cause of mental 
synthesis in organic synthesis ? This would scarcely help us, for 
we know how difficult it is to explain physiological unity in the 
living being. 

The unity of the fact of consciousness is indisputable, and, to 
our mind, inexplicable, so long as we do not go beyond pheno- 
mena — that is to say, beyond the sphere of science. But, though we 
here treat of the composition of the mind, we desire in no respect 
to go beyond the phenomenology of the mind. We will, then, 
examine the different aspects of the question from the point of 
view of experience. 

The question which arises with regard to the unity of life arises 
again with regard to the. unity of consciousness : whether it be an 
effect or a cause. We have seen that some physiologists, instead 
of regarding life as a cause on which the functions depend, place, 
on the contrary, all the reality in the functions of which vital unity 
is only a resultant or composite effect. The same hypothesis has 
been introduced into psychology, and it is upheld by the following 
arguments. 

In psychology the idea of personality is fundamental, as in 
biology is the idea of individuality. But the person, the ego, the 
thinking subject, assumed as a perfect unity, is but a theoretic 
conception. It is an ideal which the individual approaches as he 
rises in the scale of being, but to which he never attains. Our 
personality breaks up into an infinity of sensations, sentiments, 
images and ideas, past or future ; it is only a synthesis, an aggre- 
gate, a sum that is ever undergoing addition and subtraction, but 
of which the whole reality is in the concrete events which com- 
pose it. 

If we scan the whole biologic scale, we shall see that at the 
lowest grade, where there is simply life, the phenomena and the 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 237 

functions have for their characteristic the fact that they are simul- 
taneous : digestion, circulation, respiration, the secretions, etc. y 
with all their subdivisions, take place at the same time, and depend 
on one another. But if we pass from plants to the lower animals, 
and from them to the higher, we find added to the vital actions 
other actions which have a tendency to* range themselves in simple 
succession, to be produced under the form of a series. These 
actions we call psychical. In the radiata, the mollusca, and the 
articulata, the psychical life has for its centres ganglia dispersed 
through the animal; the actions of these are very imperfectly 
co-ordinated, so that there is rather simultaneousness than succes- 
sion : hence their mental inferiority. This dispersion of psychical 
life explains the fact that if we cut in two or more pieces an earth- 
worm, a centipede, or a praying mantis, each piece of the insect 
moves and acts on its own account. But in proportion as we 
ascend in the animal series, the nervous system grows more and 
more perfect, and the centres are co-ordinated with a view to a 
higher unity ; simultaneous action gives place to a more and more 
perfect succession, without however attaining it. This fusion of 
simultaneousness with succession can never be complete ; and thus 
the tendency of psychical actions to take the form of a simple 
series is ever approaching this ideal, but never absolutely attains it. 

We can also attack this problem of the unity of consciousness in 
another way. We have just seen that it necessarily occurs under 
the form of a series, a succession — that is to say, under condition 
of time. But time is measurable ; and since to study is to measure, 
and as accurate science consists of measurement, it follows that 
consciousness in some degree comes under the cognizance of 
exact science. 

The experiments made on this subject are of recent date. 
Towards the close of the last century the Greenwich astronomers 
remarked that the various observers did not observe in the same 
way the coming of a star to the meridian. The variations some- 
times amounted to half a second. Bessel, of Konigsberg, was the 
first to suppose that this difference was owing to psychological 
causes, and he set himself to determine this error, or personal equa- 
tion. From observations made by astronomers, it resulted that 
some time elapses between the instant when an act is performed 



238 Heredity. 



and the instant when an attentive observer signals his perception 
of it. Though the velocity of thought seemed to defy all measure- 
ment, still it has been determined by Helmholtz, Donders, Hirsch, 
and Marey, by means of ingenious experiments. 

From these experiments it results that the velocity of impres- 
sions varies according to the individuals, and even for the same 
individual according to the temperature : at a low temperature the 
velocity of the nervous agent is less. Impressions travel from the 
periphery to the nerve-centres, and volitions from the nerve-centres 
to the periphery, with an average velocity of thirty metres per 
second. Between visual, auditory, and tactile impressions and the 
reaction of the hand showing that the perception has been per- 
ceived, there elapses one-fifth of a second in the case of visual 
impressions \ one-sixth in case of auditory impressions ; and one- 
seventh in case of tactile impressions. But, as Donders remarked, 
this case is itself complex, and is resolvable into two psychical 
stages: (1) impression travelling from periphery to centre; (2) 
volition travelling from the centre to the hand. By some curious 
experiments he thinks he can prove that the simplest act of 
thought, the solution of a very easy dilemma, requires one-fifteenth 
of a second. Wundt, from experiments of his own, finds that the 
most rapid act of thought requires one-tenth of a second. 1 

The velocity of thought, and consequently the number of states 
of consciousness, vary considerably. In some dreams, and in the 
mental state produced by opium and hasheesh, this velocity is such 
that phenomena of consciousness which can have lasted only a 
few seconds appear, by an illusion that is easily explained, to 
have lasted several minutes or several hours. The well-known 
opium eater, De Quincey, had dreams which appeared to ' last 
ten, twenty, fifty, or seventy years, or even transcended the limits 
of all possible experience.' The reason of this is, that we measure 
the length of time by the number of our states of consciousness. 
Retrospectively, a space of time during which we have been active 
seems much longer than one in which we have been idle. A week 
spent in travel seems longer than one spent in the habitual mono- 



1 For a study of this subject in its psychological relations, see Wundt, 
Menschen tend Thierseele, Lectures 4 and 23. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 239 

tony and routine of life. Under the enormous and sudden afflux of 
sensations and ideas, space, like time, expands beyond all measure 
in the consciousness. ' The buildings, the mountains/ says De 
Quincey, ' loomed up in proportions too grand to be taken in by 
the eye. The plain stretched out, and was lost in immensity.' 

Thus these facts, chosen from among many others, show that 
the succession which constitutes consciousness is ever varying in 
velocity and complexity, and consequently we appear to be far 
enough removed from that ego — that simple, invariable, unchange- 
able unit — which some have imagined. 

These researches into the measurement of the phenomena of 
consciousness as to their duration will doubtless sooner or later lead 
to important conclusions; for the present we think we may draw a 
few of these provisionally. 

1. The inner sense, like all the other senses, has its limits, 
beyond which it perceives nothing. There is a psychical minimum, 
just as there is a visual, or an auditory minimum. Suppose one- 
eighth of a second to be the briefest state of consciousness, then a 
cerebral phenomenon lasting one-fifteenth or one-twentieth of a 
second will lie outside of consciousness. 

2. In consciousness, simultaneousness is only apparent. If 
certain states of consciousness seem to be simultaneous (and 
Hamilton supposed that we could entertain seven ideas at once) 
it is simply because their succession is so rapid that we cannot note 
their want of continuity. If consciousness could have its micro- 
scope, as the eye has, we should see succession where now we see 
simultaneousness ; for instance, in the perception of a complex 
object, as a house. 

3. The greater part of our internal states can never enter the 
consciousness. Our total life is made up of sundry particular 
lives, and the life of each organ has its echo in the various ganglia 
and nerve-centres scattered throughout the body. But as all these 
internal states are simultaneous, while consciousness is a succes- 
sion, the result is that the majority of them remain in the uncon- 
scious state. There exists between them a real ' struggle for life,' 
a strife to attain consciousness — a strife which has place, now 
between phenomena of the same class, as between sensation and 
sensation, image and image, idea and idea \ again, between phe- 



240 Heredity. 



nomena of different classes — a sensation and an image, a sentiment 
and an idea. 

Every analysis, therefore, of whatever kind, issues in this : that 
consciousness conveys to me only a small part of what passes 
within me. My personality is complex; my unity is that of a 
regiment, rather than that of a mathematical point. For, without 
attempting the long and delicate task of analysing our personality, 
we may say that it comprises at least four e^ential elements : (1) 
We have as a basis for all the others, the general sense of the 
existence of our body, of the play of its functions, of its normal or 
morbid state. (2) The knowledge of our perceptions or actual 
ideas. (3) The knowledge of our previous states. (4) The sense 
of our activity — that is to say, the faculty of knowing how we act 
upon the outer world, and how we are acted on by it. 

But the same question constantly presents itself. How does all 
this attain unity ? We are brought back again to this unavoidable 
difficulty. Is the unity, without which there is no consciousness, 
a reality or an abstraction ? There is here, we take it, an insoluble 
antinomy. 

On the one hand, if we suppose the unit, the ego, the person, 
to have any reality beyond the phenomena, we attribute real 
existence to an abstraction. For if, ex hypothesi, I abstract from 
my ego all the phenomenal plurality which manifests it — my sensa- 
tions, sentiments, ideas, resolutions, etc. — the subject so denuded 
is a mere possibility ; that is to say, the poorest, emptiest, hollowest 
of abstractions. 

On the other hand, if we suppose that the phenomena alone are 
real, and that the unit, the ego, the person, is but a sum, a result- 
ant — that is to say, an abstraction — we enunciate an unintelligible 
proposition \ for these phenomena which constitute me possess the 
twofold character of being given to me as phenomena, and of 
being given to me as mine. My sensations, sentiments, ideas — in 
short, all my states of consciousness — imply a synthetic judgment, 
in virtue of which they are referred to my personality and inte- 
grated therewith. Without this synthetic judgment, all those 
phenomena which are most intimate to me would be as foreign to 
me as those which take place beyond Herschel's nebulae. Scat- 
tered pearls do not make a necklace, there is need of a string to- 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 241 

connect them ; if we cut an apple into twenty pieces, and scatter 
them to the winds from the summit of a tower, these scattered 
fragments no longer make up an apple. The same would be the 
case with that phenomenal, disintegrated, and unconnected plurality, 
which nothing can reduce to unity. But, like the ego and the non- 
ego, the internal and the external are correlative terms, and the 
one cannot be assumed without the other ; if I cannot know my- 
self, I cannot know anything ; and thus, if there is no unity of 
consciousness there is no cognition, whether internal or external, 
nor is there in the universe any such thing as thought. To 
suppose, as some appear to have done, that the unity of the ego 
is nothing but the continuity of the consciousness, is an illusion, 
for consciousness being, as we have seen, discontinuous, could 
produce only an intermittent unity. 

Thus, then, we find it impossible to reach a conclusion, or 
rather, we find ourselves forced to conclude that here science ends 
and metaphysics begins. We are face to face with the unknow- 
able ; it is within us, in the profoundest depths of our being. We 
are equally unable to suppress the two terms of our antinomy and 
to reconcile them ; equally unable to say whether our unity is real 
or only apparent. The fact is, that the study of the ultimate con- 
ditions of consciousness withstands analysis. The analytical 
method is the only one possible, and here the analytical method is 
illusory. We think we have explained a complex fact, when, by 
successive simplifications, we have reduced it to its constituent 
elements. And this is generally true : but in the biological and 
psychological order, the synthesis made after analysis is not iden- 
tical with the synthesis that existed prior to analysis. Here the 
whole is not equal to the sum of the parts. Chemistry, by its syn- 
thesis and analysis, enables us to understand this apparent paradox. 
It shows that if two or more simple bodies, each having special 
properties, combine, the resulting whole usually possesses physi- 
cal, chemical, and physiological characteristics altogether different 
from those of its constituent parts ; thus, sulphuric acid resem- 
bles neither sulphur nor oxygen. In the mental order there are 
analogous combinations, and possibly our ego is one which is 
made and unmade every moment. But we cannot know this. 

We must, then, be on our guard against supposing that we have 

R 



242 Heredity. 



explained all when we have analysed all. In pyschology, analysis 
is of service in making us acquainted with the emphatic conditions 
of phenomena, which is nearly the whole extent of our science ; 
but our science is not everything. 

IV. 

We can now arrive at a summary view of the general relations 
of the physical and the moral. In the first place, all the foregoing 
discussions and expositions are reducible to two essential pro- 
positions : — 

1. The phenomena which constitute physical and mental life, 
taken in their totality, seem to form a continuous series of such a 
nature that at the one extremity of the series all is unconscious 
and purely physiological, and at the other end all is conscious and 
purely psychological; and that the transition from the one extreme 
to the other is performed by insensible gradations, whether it be 
that the unconscious rises to the conscious, or that the conscious 
returns to unconsciousness. 

2. The purely physiological phenomena appear to be reduced 
in the last analysis to motion, and purely psychological phenomena 
to sensation ; and thus we have the problem of the relations be- 
tween the physical and the moral brought down to this question : 
What is the relation between a nerve-vibration and a sensation ? 

Some, taking their stand in metaphysics, think the problem to 
be resolvable; others, holding to experience, regard it as un- 
solvable. 

If we examine the tendencies of contemporary metaphysics on 
this point, we shall find two currents of doctrine quite distinct, 
and both equally logical. Either we may regard motion as the 
only reality, all else being but a modification of it, thought being 
the maximum of motion ; or we may regard thought as the only 
reality, of which all the rest is only a modification, motion being 
the minimum of thought. The former hypothesis might be called 
mechanism, or, by a somewhat antiquated term, materialism. The 
second hypothesis is idealism. It is enough for our purpose to 
show briefly that neither of these hypotheses can be scientifically 
established. 

1. The mechanical theory is very simple— it starts from motion, 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 243 

to which it affirms that everything can be reduced. So long as it 
holds to the inorganic world it is not easily assailable ; to motion, 
in fact, the properties of brute matter may be reduced — heat, 
light, cohesion, sound, and, probably, also the phenomena of 
electro-magnetism. It is even known with exactitude what nu- 
merical ratio subsists between a given quantity of motion and a 
given quantity of heat. As regards chemical action, its reduction 
to motion is less clear ; but suppose that all this should one day be 
explained, the inorganic would be reduced to simple bodies and 
motion. According to the mechanical hypothesis, the world of 
life is reducible to the same terms. In the first place, since the 
researches of Wohler, chemical synthesis has effaced every line 
of demarcation between organic and inorganic chemistry. The 
ternary and quarternary compounds which constitute organic 
matter are chiefly confined to oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and 
nitrogen. Their elements, therefore, are not bodies of a peculiar 
kind. Living substance possesses no properties due to any imagi- 
nary ' vital principle.' Life, together with the play of the 
functions which compose it, is but a very complicated chemistry 
and mechanism. But if we were to admit that this mechanical 
conception of life is confirmed in all its details (which is not the 
case), it would still have to explain what is most essential in living 
beings, their unity. To say, as has been said, that living matter 
is endowed with the peculiar property of ' adapting itself to ends,' 
explains nothing. We thus attribute to it an unconscious intelli- 
gence, but in so doing we go beyond the bounds of mechanism. 
This unity, this consensus, is so important in the living creature that 
Auguste Comte himself admits that here 'we must substitute 
for analytic study synthetic considerations' — that is to say, instead 
ot passing from the lower to the higher, from the components to 
the resultant, we must descend from the higher to the lower, from 
the end to the subordinated means. 1 But if we suppose that 
mechanism explains life, and endeavour, with its assistance, to 

1 In his Rapport sur la Physiologie Generate, Claude Bernard thinks that we 
are justified in reducing life to the laws of inorganic nature, but that we have 
no right to say that the processes are identical. Life has processes of its own. 
See also some excellent observations in Renouvier, Ciitique Genh-ate, tome iii. 
p. 90, et sea. 



244 Heredity 



arrive at an understanding of thought, we have first to explain 
how the nervous system is constituted, which is the indispensable 
condition of all thought. As we are aware, it is only a comple- 
mentary apparatus : certain infusoria, whose bodies are only an 
amorphous mass, entirely void of muscles and nerves, have yet 
a relative life. Relying on the law of evolution, on the passage 
from the simple to the complex, and on the physiological division 
of labour, some have endeavoured to explain the genesis of the 
nervous system. The most curious essays in this direction have 
been made by one who in other respects rejects the mechanical 
hypothesis. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Biology (§ 302), and more 
particularly in his Psychology (Part 5), strives to show how a nerve 
might be produced in an extremely simple primitive organism 
by the laws of motion ; and how, from this beginning, more and 
more complicated nervous systems might be developed. If this 
bold genesis were beyond question, it would be a great victory for 
the mechanical theory, but still the necessity would remain of ex- 
plaining how nerve-vibration becomes a fact of consciousness. 
We are utterly incapable of understanding how motion becomes 
thought. The hypothesis is indemonstrable in theory, and incon- 
ceivable in fact. If it be said that, subjectively, heat and light are 
as different from motion as the fact of consciousness is different 
from nerve-vibration, we must observe that the comparison is not 
exact. For a motion to become light there is need of an optical 
apparatus and consciousness ; for a motion to become sound there 
is need of an acoustic apparatus and consciousness. But for a 
nerve-vibration to become consciousness — which as yet has no 
existence — what is needed ? How shall we explain this metamor- 
phosis ? 

Such, briefly, is the mechanical hypothesis, which it would 
require a volume to set forth in its details. According to it, 
phenomena differ in nothing from one another save in this, that 
the higher are produced by a concentration, and the lower by a 
dispersion of force. A unit of thought would be equivalent to 
several units of life, and a unit of life to several units of purely 
mechanical force. At least, such would seem to be the tenour of 
the observations made by one of its most recent exponents, Dr. 
Maudsley, in his Physiology of Mind. ' All ascending transform- 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 245 

ations of matter and force are, so to speak, concentrations of the 
same .within a less space. One equivalent of chemical force cor- 
responds to several equivalents of a lower force, and one equivalent 
of vital force to several equivalents of chemical. The same holds 
good for the various tissues. . . If we suppose a higher tissue to 
undergo a decomposition, or a retrograde metamorphosis, which 
shall necessarily coincide with the resolution of its energies into 
lower modes, we may say that a simple monad of the higher tissue, 
or one equivalent of its force, is equal to several monads of the 
lower kind of tissue, or to several equivalents of its force. The 
characteristic of living matter is that it is a complexity of combina- 
tions, and a variety of elements so brought together in a small 
space that we cannot trace them \ and in nervous structure this 
concentration and this complication are carried to the utmost 
degree. . . The highest energy of nature is, in fact, the most 
dependent. The reason of the powerful influence it is capable of 
exerting on the lower forces which serve in its evolution is, that it 
implicitly contains the essence of all lower kinds of energy. As 
the man of genius implicitly comprises humanity, so the nervous 
clement implicitly comprises nature.' In another place, the author 
adds the following remark, which can hardly be reconciled with 
mechanism : - What is this progress, this m'sus, which is so evident 
when we take all nature into account? Is it not a striving of 
nature to attain consciousness, to attain the possession of itself? 
In the series of manifold productions, man, says Goethe, was the 
first wherein nature held converse with God.' 

We shall not attempt, in this place, the discussion of the mechan- 
ical theory. We shall hereafter submit both it and its opposite, 
idealism, to criticism. We would only remark for the present 
that, from the standpoint of experience, we may object to it that it 
is an excessive abuse of hypothesis, which it exalts to reality. 1 While 

1 Those who occupy the metaphysical point of view refute mechanism by 
saying that from the less it deduces the greater. 

Taken by itself, this axiom is incontestable, for it is only another form of the 
plain truth that the whole is greater than a part, but we must here be careful. 
The terms greater and less are quantitative expressions, and hence they have no 
value except in the domain of the measurable^ the homogeneous, the mathe- 
matical. To employ them aright, the two terms must be comparable and 



246 Heredity. 



among these hypotheses there are some which share in the present 
imperfection of the sciences, but which may be accepted in advance,, 
there are others which so far transcend all possible experience 
that there is no rashness in rejecting them. 

2. Idealism is not so easily set forth as the opposite theory : 
not that it is less simple, or that it does not hang so well together, 
but because it conversely follows the scientific order, proceeding 
always from the end to the subordinated means, descending step 
by step the series which mechanism ascends step by step. The 
starting-point of mechanism is very definite, if it is not very certain ; 
idealism at the outset takes up its position in the absolute, which 
is the only point of view from which the universe can be surveyed, 
' For God serves to explain the soul, and the soul to explain nature/ 
We are here beyond the reach of experience, and consequently 
of science. Yet we must attain to science, must pass from the 
absolute to the relative, from ourselves to phenomena. But how, 
by what mysterious operation is this done ? Idealism answers only 
in metaphors — which is inevitable, since the finite and the infinite 
are incommensurable, and, ex hypothesis there is no possible ratio 
between the first and the second term. If we suppose *this first 
difficulty solved, we are then on the ground of experience, in 
possession of a reality derived from the absolute, which will serve 
ultimately to measure and explain everything. This reality is 
thought. 

According to Schopenhauer and his school, thought would 
occupy only the second place, intelligence would be only ' the 
physics of the mind ? imprisoned in the subjective forms of time, 

consequently of the same nature. To say that mind is the greater and matter 
the less, is to be the dupe of words ; it is to apply to quality what is true only of 
quantity. The relation of mind to matter is not a relation of greater and less, 
but of object to object. 

It is also said that the mechanical theory subordinates the higher to the 
lower. This refutation, for which we are indebted to A. Comte, is more exact, 
because it substitutes the qualitative point of view for the quantitative. For my 
own part, I certainly consider the psychological order superior to the vital 
order, and the latter to the inorganic world. But these ideas of higher and 
lower may well possess only a subjective value, and be only a mere human way 
of considering things, so that this refutation, however true in fact, has no logical 
cogency or true scientific value. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 247 

space, and causality. The supreme reality would be will, which 
alone springs not from intellectual experience, and which alone is 
directly conceived. Yet will thus posed, without and above all 
consciousness, all idea, is only in name like that will of which we 
have consciousness, or of that which enters into the texture of the 
effects and causes which constitute experience. We cannot define 
this absolute will because, ex hypothesis it is not knowable, 
and because nothing exists for us, except so far as we know it. 
But not to dwell on these inner discordances of idealism, let us 
admit that thought, in its broad sense, is the principle of all things. 
Astonishing and paradoxical as this thesis might at first appear 
to the average mind, it is in many respects true, incontestable, 
even in the eyes of the partisan of pure experience. By an un- 
scientific illusion, we imagine that were man and, in general, every 
thinking and sensing brain to disappear, the universe would still sub- 
sist with its light, its colours, its forms, its harmonies, its aesthetics. 
But this is not so, since the universe, at least for us, is only a sum 
of states of consciousness. Resistance, form, colour — in short, all 
the attributes of matter — exists for us only on this condition. The 
order of these phenomena, their existences, or their uniform suc- 
cessions — that is to say, their laws — exist for us only on this condi- 
tion. 'And this world/ says Schopenhauer, ' would no longer 
exist if human brains were not unceasingly multiplied, springing up 
like mushrooms, to take in the universe, which is ready to founder 
in nothingness, and to toss between them like a ball this great 
image identical in all, of which they express the identity by the 
word object.' 

Without accepting this absolute idealism, which is hypothetical, 
experience alone compels us to admit that for us all real or 
possible existence is bounded by the limits of our real or pos- 
sible thought. If, then, we place thought at the summit of all 
things — as well in the absolute as in the experience, since it is 
thought which, in revealing itself, reveals all things — it follows that, 
for idealism, in proportion as we descend from pure thought to 
sensation, from sensation to the vital phenomena, and from the 
vital phenomena to chemical and mechanical action, the universe 
grows obscure and mean ; there is constant diminution of reality, 
of being. Sensation and sense-impressions are intelligible, but life 



248 Heredity. 



is an unconscious thought enclosed in matter ; c the body is a 
mind of a moment's duration.' In the inorganic world, at the 
lowest grade of the scale, the phenomena of shock or of the com- 
munication of motion, the clearest of all for mechanism, is in 
fact the most obscure, because there the effort, the will, which 
constitutes all thought, is more widely separated than elsewhere 
from its effect : there thought is aliena a se. Further, the pheno- 
menon of shock includes that which some would have it replace, 
viz. spontaneity. ' Inertia, with the elasticity which results from 
it, is to the body what is to the soul the innate tendency to 
preserve the action that constitutes its essence, and to restore it 
when it is deranged.' Inertia is analogous to and derived from 
will, and all motion is in its essence an aiming at something. Thus 
everything is explained by thought, all that is intelligible ; and, as 
Berkeley says, ' In all that exists is life, in all that lives is sensation, 
and in all that has sensation is thought/ 

Such is the idealistic system — a system that hangs well together, 
even if it be not conclusive. We do not accuse it of depending 
on an hypothesis, such as : ' Thought is the only reality,' for this 
it shares in common with metaphysics, and, indeed, with all human 
science. All our scientific knowledge, however coherent, how- 
ever solid and fruitful in results, is like a gold chain, of which 
we do not see the first link. As we are alike incapable of tran- 
scending experience and of being content with experience, and as 
science has the same limits as experience, the only way of tran- 
scending these limits is hypothesis. Every system of thought 
employs hypothesis more or less ; idealism more frankly than 
any other system. A graver defect, as we view it, is, that even 
though the hypothesis be admitted, the system nevertheless still 
contains an insuperable difficulty. How does thought, which is 
the only reality, become something else for itself, something so 
different that it no longer recognizes itself? What is the cause 
of this continuous and ever-increasing lapse of thought? It 
evidently cannot be any external cause, for by the hypothesis 
there is nothing beyond thought. What, then, is the internal 
cause ? Nature, it will be said, is ( an exterioration of the mind ' 
— a proposition that relatively is incontestable, but absolutely 
doubtful, for experience shows that we are as incapable of sup- 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 249 

posing matter without mind as mind without matter; subject and 
object, external and internal, are correlative terms. If the object 
is in the last analysis reduced to states of consciousness which 
come from within, states of consciousness are reduced in the last 
analysis to sensations which come from without. The object is 
constituted by the aid of elements derived from the subject, and 
the subject is constituted by the aid of elements derived from the 
object. From this alternative there is no escape. 

Moreover, the radical weakness of these two rival doctrines, 
mechanism and idealism, has been so well demonstrated in a 
recent work by Herbert Spencer, that we cannot do better than 
to give that author's remarks in his own words. 

' Here, indeed, we arrive at the barrier which needs to be per- 
petually pointed out, alike to those who seek materialistic expla- 
nations of mental phenomena, and to those who are alarmed lest 
such explanations may be found. The last class prove by their 
fear almost as much as the first prove by their hope, that they 
believe that mind may possibly be interpreted in terms of matter ; 
whereas many whom they vituperate as materialists are profoundly 
convinced that there is not the remotest possibility of so inter- 
preting them. For those who, not deterred by foregone conclu- 
sions, have pushed their analysis to the uttermost, see very clearly 
that the concept we form to ourselves as matter, is but the symbol 
of some form of power absolutely and for ever unknown to us ; 
and a symbol which we cannot suppose to be like the reality 
without involving ourselves in contradictions. They also see 
that the representation of all objective activities in the terms of 
motion is but a representation of them, and not a knowledge of 
them ; and that we are immediately brought to alternative absur- 
dities if we assume the power manifested to us as motion to be 
in itself that which we conceive as motion. When, with these 
conclusions that matter and motion, as we think them, are but 
symbolic of unknowable forms of existence, we join the con- 
elusion, lately reached, that mind also is unknowable, and that 
the simplest form under which we can think of its substance is 
but a symbol of something that can never be rendered into 
thought ; we see that the whole question is at last nothing more 
than the question whether these symbols should be expressed in 



250 Heredity. 



terms of those, or those in terms of these — a question scarcely- 
worth deciding, since either answer leaves us as completely out- 
side of the reality as we were at first. 

' Nevertheless, it may be as well to say here, once for all, 
that were we compelled to choose between the alternative of 
translating mental phenomena into physical phenomena, or of 
translating physical phenomena into mental phenomena, the latter 
alternative would seem the more acceptable of the two. Mind, 
as known to the possessor of it, is a circumscribed aggregate of 
activities ; and the cohesion of these activities one with another, 
throughout the aggregate, compels the postulation of a something 
of which they are the activities. But the same experiences which 
make him aware of this coherent aggregate of mental faculties,, 
simultaneously make him aware of activities that are not included 
in it — outlying activities which become known by their effects on 
this aggregate, but which are experimentally proved to be not 
coherent with it, and to be coherent with one another. As, by 
the definition of them, these external activities cannot be brought 
within the aggregate of activities distinguished as those of mind, 
they must for ever remain to him nothing more than the unknown 
correlatives of their effects on this aggregate, and can be thought 
of only in terms furnished by this aggregate. Hence, if he re- 
gards his conceptions of these activities lying beyond mind, as 
constituting knowledge of them, he is deluding himself; he is but 
representing these activities in terms of mind, and can never do 
otherwise. Eventually, he is obliged to admit that his ideas of 
matter and motion, merely symbolic of unknowable realities, are 
complex states of consciousness built out of units of feeling. 
But if, after admitting this, he persists in asking whether units of 
feeling are of the same nature as the units of force distinguished 
as external, or whether the units of force distinguished as external 
are of the same nature as units of feeling; then the reply, 
still substantially the same, is, that Ave may go further towards 
conceiving units of external force to be identical with units of 
feeling, than we can towards conceiving units of feeling to be 
identical with units of external force. Clearly, if units of external 
force are regarded as absolutely unknown and unknowable, then 
to translate units of force into them is to translate the known. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 251 

into the unknown, which is absurd. And if they are what they 
are supposed to be by those who identify them with their symbols, 
then the difficulty of translating units of feeling into them is insur- 
mountable \ if force, as it objectively exists, is absolutely alien in 
nature from that which exists subjectively as feeling, then the 
transformation of force into feeling is unthinkable. Either way, 
therefore, it is impossible to interpret inner existence in terms of 
outer existence. But if, on the other hand, units of force, as 
they exist objectively, are essentially the same in nature with 
those manifested subjectively as units of feeling, then a con- 
ceivable hypothesis remains open. Every element of that aggre- 
gate of activities constituting a consciousness, is known as be- 
longing to consciousness only by its cohesion with the rest. 
Beyond the limits of this coherent aggregate of activities exist 
activities quite independent of it, and which cannot be brought 
into it. We may imagine, then, that by their exclusion from the 
circumscribed activities constituting consciousness, these outer 
activities, though of the same intrinsic nature, become antithe- 
tically opposed in aspect. Being disconnected from consciousness,. 
or cut off by its limits, they are thereby rendered foreign to it. 
Not being incorporated with its activities, or linked with these as- 
they are with one another, consciousness cannot, as it were, run 
through them ; and so they come to be figured as unconscious — 
are symbolized as having the nature called material, as opposed to 
that called spiritual. While, however, it thus seems an imaginable 
possibility that units of external force may be identical in nature 
with units of the force known as feeling, yet we cannot, by so> 
representing them, get any nearer to a comprehension of external 
force. For, as already shown, supposing all forms of mind to be 
composed of homogenous units of feeling variously aggregated,, 
the resolution of them into such units leaves us as unable as- 
before to think of the substance of mind as it exists in such units; 
and thus, even could we really figure to ourselves all units of ex- 
ternal force as being essentially like units of the force known as 
feeling, and as so constituting a universal sentiency, we should 
be as far as ever from forming a conception of that which is 
universally sentient. 

' Hence, though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called 



.252 Heredity. 



matter into so-called spirit, than to translate so-called spirit into 
:SO-called matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet 
no translation can carry us beyond our symbols. Such vague con- 
ceptions as loom before us are illusions conjured up by the wrong 
connotations of our words. The expression ' substance of mind,' 
if we use it in any other way than as the x of our equation, in- 
evitably betrays us into errors ; for we cannot think of substance 
save in terms that imply material properties. Our only course is 
constantly to recognize our symbols as symbols only, and to rest 
content with that duality of them which our constitution necessi- 
tates. The unknowable, as manifested to us within the limits of 
consciousness in the shape of feeling, being no less inscrutable 
than the unknowable as manifested beyond the limits of conscious- 
ness in other shapes, we approach no nearer to understanding the 
last by rendering it into the first. The conditioned form under 
which being is presented in the subject cannot, any more than the 
-conditioned form under which being is presented in the object, be 
the unconditioned being common to the two.' x 

v. 

In the preceding paragraph we said that on the question of the 
relations between the physical and the moral some authors, taking 
the metaphysical point of view, think that the problem can be 
resolved, while others, basing themselves on experience, hold it to 
be insoluble. Further, we have seen that metaphysics fails to 
solve it : mechanism fails, because it reduces all to motion, which 
ultimately is not cognized, save on the condition of thought ; and 
idealism fails, because it reduces all to thought, which does not 
exist without an object ; so that neither of these two antithetic 
terms can absorb the other. The conclusion, therefore, must be 
that the problem is by its very nature insoluble. This, however, 
is not a return to a proposition long accepted, and in a manner 
classical. We will explain why it is not. 

The commonly accepted dualism takes the metaphysical point of 
view ; it opposes a substance which it does not know— mind — 



1 Principles of Psychology, 2nd Edition, § 63. 



Relations betweeji the Physical and the Moral. 253; 

to another substance it does not know — matter — without being able 
to reconcile them, as is natural, for how can light be produced out 
of the clash of two ignorances? On the contrary, the partisan 
of experience pronounces the question unsolvable, precisely because 
it transcends experience, that is to say, demonstrated or verifiable 
science. The one is pent within the impotency of his metaphysics ; 
the other within the limits of his method. The ignorance of the 
former is owing to the gaps in his philosophy ; that of the latter, 
to his voluntary abstention from all transcendental research. 

In our times, the fine generalization known as the law of equiva- 
lence, or of the correlation of forces, has led some bold thinkers to 
state in another form the problem of the relations between the 
physical and the moral. Modern physics considers all the forces 
of nature — heat, light, electricity, magnetism, cohesion, chemical 
affinity, gravity — as capable of being reduced all to one principle, 
and of being transformed into one another in accordance with 
fixed rules, which are nothing else but the laws of mechanics. It 
is also generally admitted that the law of equivalence governs 
vital phenomena, and muscular contraction and innervation in par- 
ticular. But is it also applicable to mental phenomena ? Is it 
possible for it to pass from nerve facts to states of consciousness ? 
Do mental forces enter the category of the other forces, and are 
they in like manner convertible ? 

Some authors in our day answer affirmatively. Bain has accu- 
mulated and cited some facts from which he infers, (1) the equiva- 
valence or transmutability of nervous and mental forces, and (2) 
the equivalence or transformation of the mental forces into one 
another. Thus, according to him, it would be possible to establish 
an equivalence on the one hand between a certain nervous state 
and a certain mental state, and on the other hand between the 
three principal forms of mental life — sensibility, will and intelli- 
gence ; so that a state of consciousness would imply the trans- 
formation and expenditure of a certain amount of nerve-force ; 
and an increase of sensibility would be possible only by a diminu- 
tion of intelligence and will, the sum of force in the living being 
remaining constant amid all these transformations. The magnifi- 
cent synthesis contained in Herbert Spencer's First Principles 
reduces all phenomena without exception to the law of equivalence. 



2 54 Heredity. 



1 No thought, no feeling/ says the author, ' is ever manifested, 
save as the result of a physical force. This principle will before 
long be a scientific common place.' 

They who hold this doctrine observe that nervous force, which 
ultimately results from nutrition, must, after it is produced, be 
expended in one or other of these three ways : either by acting on 
the viscera, the heart, or the digestive organs, as is the case in 
deep emotion; or by acting on the muscles and producing move- 
ments, gestures, and various expressions of the physiognomy ; or 
by causing the excitation to pass to some other part of the nervous 
-system, and hence result those successive states which make up 
consciousness. Sensations excite ideas and emotions ; the latter 
in turn awaken other ideas and emotions, and so on — that is to 
say, the tension existing in certain nerves, or groups of nerves, 
when they give us sensations, ideas, or emotions, produces an 
equivalent tension in some other nerves, or groups of nerves, with 
which they are connected. 

But the facts cited in support of this thesis do not appear to us 
to be all equally conclusive. Some of them are no doubt trans- 
formations, but then others are rather correspondences. Thus, the 
pain which is transformed into cries and extravagant contortions is 
of short duration ; pain which endures is reticent of expression. 
And the same is to be said of anger. But in certain cases — for 
example, in the cerebral excitation produced by hasheesh or opium 
— it is not quite certain that between the nervous state and the 
mental state there exists equivalence, transformation, and not 
simply correspondence. 

This doctrine of the correlation of physical forces and thought 
is as yet hardly more than an outline. It is still in the qualitative 
period^ and it is doubtful whether it will very soon enter on the 
quantitative period, which alone can constitute it a science. It is 
however a promising field, and one well adapted to exercise free 
and daring minds. If it could be demonstrated scientifically, it is 
evident that then the problem of the relations between the physical 
and the moral would come before us in a new aspect : it would be 
only a particular case of the law of the correlation of forces. We 
need not say that such a solution, restricted to experience, would 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 255 

be neither spiritualistic nor materialistic, for those at least who 
care for the preciseness of the terms they employ. 1 

But not to dwell upon a problem which cannot be incidentally 
discussed, we will endeavour to deduce a conclusion from all that 
has been said, which shall be based, so far as possible, on experience. 
It appears that all contemporary schools, when we eliminate that 
which appertains to the exclusive point of view of each, tend more 
and more to consider physical and moral phenomena as identical. 
This conclusion seems perfectly natural, especially to those who 
take the ground of experience ; so that we may say — at least, so far 
as current language will enable us to express ideas which are 
opposed to current opinions — that the physical is the moral looked 



1 We may cite, in confirmation of what we have said, some remarkable reflec- 
tions of the great English physicist, Tyndall. * Granted,' says he, 'that a 
definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simulta- 
neously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment 
of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from 
the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were 
•our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable 
us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following 
all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there 
be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought 
and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, 
" How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness? " 
The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectu- 
ally impassable. Let the consciousness of love^ for example, be associated with 
a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness 
of hate with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love 
that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the motion is in the 
other ; but the "why " would remain as unanswerable as before. 

1 In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought, as 
exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the 
position of the " materialist " is stated, as far as that position is a tenable one. 
I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all 
attacks ; but I do not think, in the present condition of the human mind, that 
he can pass beyond this position. I do not think he is entitled to say that his 
molecular groupings, and his molecular motions, explain everything. In reality 
they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of two 
classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. 
The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern 
form as it was in the prescientific ages. ' Fragments of Science^ vi. 



256 Heredity. 



at from without, and that the moral is the physical looked at from 
within. The difference between physical and moral is subjective, 
not objective; it pertains not to their own nature, but to our way 
of viewing them. Physics has demonstrated that heat, light, and 
sound appear to us as different, only because each of them is 
addressed to a different sense, so that all the difference comes from 
ourselves. The psychologist ought to see that the physical and 
the moral appear different to us, only because the one is cognized 
by the external senses and under the condition of time and space, 
and the other by the inner sense, under the condition of time ; so 
that all the difference comes from ourselves. Thus the absolute, 
under its unconditioned form, would be entirely beyond our reach, 
and the conditioned forms in which it is manifested to us in experi- 
ence would be opposites only by an illusion of our thought. 

Perhaps we might proceed further, and draw an important 
deduction. If we admit the identity of physical and moral pheno- 
mena ; if we observe that all that is in the living being forms a 
continuous series from perfect unconsciousness, if there be such a 
thing, to perfect consciousness ; — if, again, there be such a thing; if 
it be borne in mind that the unconscious is the abyss into which 
everything enters and from which everything proceeds, the very 
root of all our mental life, and that our personality is like a wan- 
dering light on a vast and sombre lake, where it appears as though 
swallowed up each moment, then, perhaps, we shall be inclined to 
admit that the physical order and the moral order, which in our 
consciousness appear to be different things, are identical in the 
unconscious ; that conscious duality is derived from an unconscious 
unity, so that in the unconscious, matter and thought, object and 
subject, external and internal, are one. This special reconciliation 
of the physical and moral in man would thus lead to the recon- 
ciliation of the object in general with the subject in general, of the 
universe with thought. 

This, it is true, is a metaphysical hypothesis, but then it is 
neither possible nor desirable to give up metaphysics and hypo- 
thesis. This hypothesis has been put forward by men who are as 
sturdy upholders of experience as are to be found, and who have 
treated psychology as a natural science. ' If we admit/ says Wundt, 
' the identity of physical and psychical facts, then the former will 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 257 

come under the laws of mechanics, and the latter to those of 
logic, and it can be shown that these two kinds of laws are iden- 
tical, and that the inner experience apprehends as a logical 
necessity what the outer experience perceives as a mechanical 
necessity.' ' This,' says he, in another place, - is what the analysis 
of the process of sensation comes to, viz. that logical necessity and 
mechanical necessity differ not in their essence, but simply accord- 
ing to our way of regarding them. That which is given to us 
by psychological analysis* as a continuity of logical operations 
(SchZusse), is given us also by physiological analysis as a continuity 
of mechanical effects {Krafiwirkimgen). . . . Logic and mechan- 
ism are identical ; they are both only the form of essentially the 
same contents (gleichartigen Inhalt)} 



CHAPTER II. 

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND THE MORAL. 
A PARTICULAR CASE. 

We have just seen how the question of the general relations of 
the physical and the moral presents itself in our day. We would 
now pass from the theory to the facts, to consider a particular case, 
to resolve a single question, one, however, of capital importance 
for the matter in hand. The question is this : — 

Must it be admitted that every psychological state, of whatever 
kind, has always a physiological state for its antecedent ? 

The correlation of the physical and the moral is universally 
admitted, but this belief, when examined, is very vague and very 
inexact. The general view, and, what is more serious still, many 
philosophical treatises, seem to admit that this correlation holds 
good only in the gross, so to speak, and that frequently the body 
and the soul live each for itself. A few striking cases on either 
side are considered, all the rest being cast in the shade and for- 
gotten. But, in fact, the thing is quite otherwise. Facts tend to 

1 Menschen und Thierseele, 12th Lecture, p. 200, and 57th Lecture, p. 437. 

s 



258 Heredity. 



show more and more conclusively that this correlation is as com- 
plete as possible ; that it is constant ; that it is to be seen even in 
the most insignificant cases, and that it admits of no exception. 
It is of great importance for us to establish this truth here : for if 
we could succeed in showing it to be highly probable — as yet we 
cannot hope for certainty — that every psychological state supposes 
a physiological antecedent, a considerable advance would have 
been made in our inquiry into the causes. In the order of pheno- 
mena, all our science consists in demonstrating permanent co- 
existences and permanent successions. Suppose this permanent 
co-existence of a physiological and a psychological state estab- 
lished, we can then go further, and draw the deduction that in 
every individual an habitual mental state must answer to an 
habitual nervous state. The mental constitution of a poet and 
that of a mathematician imply each a physiological organization 
differing from the other in certain points. We can go further, and 
extend to the species what has just been said of the individual. 
The permanence of a certain turn of mind in a family during 
several generations supposes the permanence of certain correspond- 
ing physiological characters during the same number of genera- 
tions. This leads us in the direction of the required answer, for 
to resolve a problem is to translate a proposition which implicitly 
contains a truth into another which gives a glimpse of it, and 
this in turn into another which exhibits it clearly. 

For the present, let it suffice to establish our premisses. Evi- 
dently experience only can decide whether every psychological 
state is connected with a physiological state ; this is a question 
of fact rather than of theory. Still, we cannot enumerate all pos- 
sible cases ; we cannot take all the states of consciousness in 
succession and show that they correspond, each with a particular 
nervous state. Such a demonstration would be endless, and it 
would, moreover, be in many cases impossible. We must, then, in 
accordance with Bacon's precept, confine ourselves to a few 
selected, striking, decisive facts, to experiinenta lucifera which may 
serve as a basis for a sound induction. We will, then, show from 
examples that sentiments and ideas are referable to certain states 
of the organs, though at first sight they would seem to be entirely 
independent of them. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 259 



1. 

At the lowest grade of psychological life, we meet with that 
infinite number of faint perceptions, scarcely conscious, of which 
the aggregate constitutes for every one that general feeling of 
existence, that Gemeingefilhl, which is the ground on which our 
clear perceptions and our ideas are incessantly projected. This 
confused feeling, which is the resultant of a crowd of infinitesimal 
sensations, as the roar of the sea is the resultant of the noise of 
each wave, is so well described by L. Peisse, in his Notes on Caba- 
ms y that we cannot do better than transcribe the passage. 

' Is it quite certain that we have absolutely no consciousness of 
the exercise of the organic functions ? If we mean a clear, dis- 
tinct, and locally determinable consciousness, like that of external 
impressions, it is plain that we do not possess it'; but we may have 
an obscure, dim, and, so to speak, latent consciousness of them, 
analogous to our consciousness of the sensations which call forth 
and accompany the respiratory movements, sensations which, 
although incessantly repeated, pass as though they were not per- 
ceived. May we not, indeed, regard as a distant, feeble, and con- 
fused echo of the universal vital labour that remarkable feeling 
which, without cessation or remission, certifies us of the actual 
existence and presence of our own bodies ? This feeling is nearly 
always, though improperly, confounded with those accidental and 
local impressions which, while we are awake, stimulate and keep 
up the play of sensibility. These sensations, though they are 
incessant, make but fugitive and transient appearances on the stage 
of consciousness, while the feeling of which we speak endures and 
persists beneath those shifting scenes. Condillac well named it 
the fundamental sentiment of existence, and Maine de Birau the 
feeling of sensitive existence. In virtue of it, the body is ever 
present to the ego as its own, and the mental subject feels and 
perceives that it exists in some sort locally within the limited 
extent of the organism. It is a perpetual and unfailing monitor, 
making the state of the body ever present to the consciousness, 
and it manifests in an unmistakable way the indissoluble con- 
nection of psychical with physiological life. In the ordinary state 
of equilibrium which constitutes perfect health, this feeling is, as 



260 Heredity. 



we have said, continuous, uniform, and ever the same, and hence 
it is that the ego does not perceive it as a distinct, special, local 
sensation. To be distinctly perceived, it must acquire a certain 
intensity, and then it is expressed by a vague impression of general 
well-being, or general discomfort, the former indicating simple 
exaltation of physiological vital action, the latter its pathological 
perversion ; but in this case it soon is localized in the form of par- 
ticular sensations pertaining to such or such a region of the body. 
At times it is revealed in a more indirect, though far more evident 
way, when it has just failed at a given point of the organism, for 
instance, in a limb struck with paralysis. The member in question 
still belongs materially to the living aggregate, but it is no longer 
included in the sphere of the organic ego, if the expression is per- 
missible. It ceases to be felt by this ego, as its own, and the 
fact of this separation, though negative, is interpreted by a very 
special positive sensation known to all who have ever suffered a 
total numbness of any part of the body, produced whether by cold 
or by compression of the nerves. This sensation is nothing else 
save the expression of that sort of void or loss which occurs in this 
universal feeling of the bodily life ; it proves that the vital state of 
that member was really, though obscurely, felt, and that it con- 
stituted one of the partial elements of the general feeling of life in 
the organic whole. Thus it is that a continual and monotonous 
noise, like that of a carriage in which we are shut, is soon unno- 
ticed though it is still heard, for if it stop suddenly the cessation is- 
at once perceived. This analogy may help us to understand the 
nature and working of the fundamental sentiment of organic life, 
which, on this hypothesis, would be but the resultant in confuso of 
the impressions made at all points of the living body by the inward 
movement of functions carried to the brain, whether directly by 
the cerebro-spinal nerves, or indirectly by the nerves of the gang- 
lionic system. 

Therefore it is not proved that, in the strict sense, the organic 
functions are performed absolutely without our knowledge, as 
Cabanis asserts. 

This Gemeingefiihl, of which the mass of men take no note, and 
which too many psychologists have neglected, is nevertheless the 
groundwork of our mental life. If in psychological analysis we 



.Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 261 

■could employ the microscope, it would resolve this general state into 
a myriad of particular states, themselves the effects of a myriad 
of vague excitations of the organism. Thus, then, this general 
feeling of existence is referable to elementary psychological states, 
•of which each has its physiological antecedent. 

11. 

If from this obscure region we pass into the full light of con- 
sciousness, we have the same result. In the order of the sentiments, 
as in that of ideas, the phenomena that are purest, most quint- 
essential and freest from matter, have, like others, their organic 
conditions. Some facts which we will cite will give us, with regard 
to this point, an amount of information that never could be divined 
by all the theories in the world unaided by experience. We will 
begin with the sentiments. 

All must admit that many of the sentiments and passions de- 
pend upon a certain state of the organs. Most languages, indeed, 
-employ words signifying ' heart ' and ' bowels/ to denote our emo- 
tions. But it will be found that to many sentiments is attributed 
the privilege of being purely spiritual. 

Thus, love. There is hardly any passion that is more intimately 
.associated with the organ. Yet it has been supposed that under a 
•certain form, called platonic, or ideal love, there arises a purely 
mental state, having nothing in common with the senses. The 
truth is, that love in man differs widely from the appetite of the 
brute, as in a great measure it is the w r ork of the imagination and 
of the mind, because it is a complex sentiment, resulting from the 
fusion of many simple sentiments. An able psychologist of our 
own day who has analysed it, finds in it, besides a physical senti- 
ment, a sense of the beautiful, affection, sympathy, admiration, 
love of approbation, self-love, love of possession and of liberty. 
Now we will show hereafter that all intellectual states have their 
physiological conditions. The physical sentiment, which is the 
starting-point of love, is masked by numerous states of con- 
sciousness more intense than itself; but it exists, notwithstanding, 
with those organic excitations peculiar to it. Facts to be found in 
medical works leave no doubt as regards this question, and prove 
that, though the spirit at first is master, the flesh at last prevails. 



262 Heredity. 



' A young man, devoted from an early period of his life to 
business, and who at the age of twenty-six had never, though occa- 
sions were not wanting, felt any desire for those pleasures which 
are pursued with such mad ardour by so many others, was suddenly,, 
and without any appreciable cause, seized with a sort of amorous 
fury. He began to idolize all womankind, but, as he was careful 
to say, with the best intentions, and in all honour, not having even 
the slightest thought of the physical pleasure given by the pos- 
session of them. He cherished these feelings in secret, and for 
several months he concealed them from every one. His education 
and his station in life made this course obligatory on him. Soon 
there arose in his mind erotic fancies, of which he was inwardly 
ashamed, and against which he struggled with all his might. But 
so possessed was he with them, that his reason was not long able 
to resist the assault. To mental disorder there soon were added 
unmistakable signs of softening of the brain : a violent maniacal 
delirium then appeared, ending in death.' 1 

We will place side by side with this ideal form of love, mystical 
love, concerning which we have the same remarks to make. On 
reading the principal treatises on religious and philosophic mysti- 
cism, often so full of poetry, and so curious as the product of fine 
analyses, we cannot but recognize a variation of ordinary love, 
and the senses have there so active a part, that both forms often 
speak the same language. Spiritualistic philosophers themselves^ 
among others Cousin, have well shown that mysticism is never 
nearer the senses than when it supposes itself to be very distant 
from them. 

Moreau, in his Physiologie Morbide, gives a curious instance of 
this erratic love, which mistakes its true origin. ' I have had under 
my eyes for several months,' says he, ' and have been able to study 
thoroughly, a young woman, who in another age, and under other 
conditions of family and surroundings, would certainly have ranked 
with the Chantals and the Guyons. I will content myself with 
citing literally and without alteration certain passages from sundry 
letters written by her, which show how far she was mistaken as ta 
the true character of the sentiments which possessed her.' 

1 Moreau of Tours, Psychologie Morbide, pp. 259—284.. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 263 

We will quote one passage, and that not from among the strong- 
est, referring the reader for further specimens to the book itself: — 

' " I went to bed with such a swelling of all the organs that I was 
dull and, as it were, stupefied. I gently kissed, like a little dog that 
is beaten, the hand of my Master ; and then, as is my custom on 
every occasion of danger, I looked on that dear Master with a 
burning gaze of love and trustfulness, and going quite out of my 
own hateful personality, I reposed in him all my true life, so that 
I went to sleep in consequence of this practical death, and at once 
I was no more conscious of myself than I should have been had I 
died outright. I awoke, however, for a moment in the night, but as 
I was no better, I took refuge again in my dear Master 

1 " I meditated on the meditations of Saint Francois de Sales on 
the Song of Songs, at my morning prayer. One night, therefore, 
while wide awake, I felt myself in suspense in the midst of all my 
enjoyments, and awaiting, with a sort of terror, what the Lord 
would say. I saw him most vividly as he is described in the Song 

of Songs He lay down near me, put his feet on my feet, 

laid his hands on mine and enlarged his thorny crown, where he 
pressed his head to mine ; then, while giving me a lively sense of 
the pains of his nails and his thorns, touching my lips with his own, 
and giving me the divinest kiss of a divine spouse, he breathed 
into my mouth a delicious breath, which pouring over my whole 
being a refreshing vigour, rejoiced it all over with an incomparable 
thrill, and won it for him without reserve.' 1 

We need not describe the influence of mutilation on the senti- 
ments in general, on the direction of the mind. In the case of 
animals, while making them weaker, it makes them also more 
docile and better suited for use by man. ' It is well known/ says 
Cabanis, ' that eunuchs are the vilest class of the .whole human 
race : they are cowardly and deceitful because they are weak, 
envious and spiteful because they are unfortunate, yet their mind 
is conscious of the lack of those impressions which give so much 
activity to the brain, and which animate it with extraordinary life. 

Then there are the hermaphrodites. All who have studied 
them in their moral characteristics, are aware that the individual 

1 Ibid. pp. 269 — 277. 



264 Heredity. 



hermaphrodite usually possesses all the psychological tastes which 
appertain to the predominant sex : thus the masculine hermaphro- 
dite likes tobacco, brandy, and women. Neuter hermaphrodites 
have been known to engage with equal pleasure in the violent 
sports of boys, and in the quieter amusements of girls. 1 

We have now to consider another category of passions, which 
are not conriected in the same way with the organs — namely, am- 
bition, avarice, love of truth \ in a word, those sentiments which are 
called intellectual. These are very complex sentiments, consist- 
ing of a number of heterogeneous elements, but in which ideas 
play the chief part. Yet it is certain that they are accompanied 
by pleasure or pain, and that these two phenomena, under what- 
ever form, are never entirely separable from the organism. Besides, 
ideas themselves have their physiological antecedents ; they have 
their condition in a cerebral state, as we shall see on looking at 
our problem from another point of view. 

in. 

Every intellectual state has for its condition and antecedent a 
physiological state. 

First, as regards the phenomena of perception, memory, and 
imagination, the fact is so plain that there is no need for us to 
dwell upon it. 

But when the question is with regard to the higher modes of 
thought, such as comparison, abstraction, generalization, judgment, 
reasoning, will, the answer is more difficult. It will be admitted 
that idiocy, insanity, ecstasy, general paralysis, and delirium always 
have their cause in a state of the brain. It will further be ad- 
mitted that the development of the understanding depends on the 
weight, form, and chemical constitution of the brain, and on the 
number of its convolutions, though with regard to this point much 
obscurity still exists. But there is generally much repugnance in 
admitting that the meditation of a Newton or a Spinoza on ab- 
stract truths implies a corresponding cerebral state, and we must 



1 Dictionnaire des Sciences Natarelles, Art. ' Hermaphrodisme.' On all these 
questions consult Cabanis, pp. 222, 223, 253 (Peisse's edition) ; Moreau, 329 ; 
Coste, Develofifiement des Corfls Organises, vol. -i. pp. 232 — 239. 



Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 265 

confess that physiology is far from being in a position to say 
precisely to what mode of nerve-vibration a given mode of 
thought answers. Yet we think that there is one fact which ? 
settles the question — that we cannot think without words. To 
think is to form a judgment ; to judge is to abstract or generalize, 
and these operations cannot be performed without signs. The 
sign is a kind of image — the substitute for an image — and it 
depends on the brain, as is proved in aphasia, and all disorders 
of the memory which prevent our using signs. The most abstract 
reflections, therefore, in so far as they are connected with signs, 
presuppose a corresponding cerebral state. 1 

In support of these general considerations, which are based on 
experience, we may cite, as in the case of the sentiments, some 
curious facts. 

Thus Dr. Dumont, a physician of the Hospital des Quinze- 
Vingts, has inquired into the influence of blindness on the intel- 
lectual faculties. Of two hundred and twenty blind persons 
with whose lives he was perfectly familiar, twenty-seven showed 
intellectual disorders — not including among these those affected 
with any appreciable cerebral lesion. 

Dr. Renaudin has observed the highly instructive case of an 
intermittent cutaneous anaesthesia that influenced the character 

and the intellect of the patient. 'A youth, Arthur , had 

.always given perfect satisfaction to his parents. Gifted with or- 
dinary understanding, he had begun his elementary studies with 
some success. Suddenly his faculties lost their energy, and he 
became so unruly that he was expelled the school. He might 
.have been considered an ordinary bad boy/ says M. Renaudin, 
* but as I continued my investigation I found in him a complete 
insensibility of the skin, and I concluded that this was the patho- 
logical explanation of the fact. Nor was I mistaken, Arthur 
has since been sent to Mareville, and from direct observation I 
have become still more confirmed in this opinion, because the 
cutaneous anaesthesia being somewhat intermittent, it has been 



1 We can think without language, but not without some mode or other of 
physical expression. The famous Laura Bridgman was always moving her 
ringers in her dreams and during her waking reflections. — (Maudsley, p. 417.) 



266 Heredity. 



easier to appreciate its influence on the mind of the patient ; when 
it ceases, he is docile and affectionate. When it reappears, his 
evil instincts return, and we have had reason to know that they 
might have led him even to murder.' 

It has been observed that when there is perfect physical similarity 
between twins, which is not rare, it is always accompanied with 
moral similarity. Moreau saw at Bicetre two young men who were 
so much alike that one would be taken for the other. They both 
possess the same monomania, the same dominant ideas, the same 
hallucinations of hearing ; they never speak to any one, nor do 
they communicate with one another. 'An exceedingly curious fact, 
often observed by the attendants and by myself, is this : from time 
to time, at irregular intervals of two, three, or more months, 
without appreciable cause, and by the entirely spontaneous action 
of their malady, a very marked change occurs in both brothers at 
the same period ; often on the same day they quit their habitual 
state of stupor and prostration and earnestly entreat the physician 
to give them their freedom. I have seen this repeated even when 
the two brothers were separated from one another by a distance 
of several miles.' 1 

The phenomenon of suggestion also, as produced in magnetized 
subjects, and in the state of catalepsy or hypnotism, supplies 
decisive facts in support of our proposition. Ordinarily, the ideas, 
sentiments, and volitions suggest the sign, and are interpreted by 
it; here, on the contrary, the sign suggests the idea, the sentiment, 
the volition. The phenomenon is reversed. Thus, by placing 
the magnetized person on his knees, the thoughts of humility and 
reverence are suggested; by lifting up his lips and his eyelids in a 
certain way, he is rendered proud and haughty; by raising his arms 
into the air, or clasping his hands on some object, he is made to 
think that he is climbing. Carpenter has collected a number of 
facts of this kind. - 

It may therefore be said that experience supplies decisive facts 
to confirm our proposition, that every psychological phenomenon 
has a physiological antecedent. It cannot be asserted on sound 
logical grounds that this is certain. To make it so, the proposition 

1 Op. cit., p. 172. See an analogous fact in Trousseau, Clinique Medicalc,. 
i. 253. 



Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 267 

should either be strictly deduced from some unquestionable 
biological law, or else it would have to be possible to give 
experimental proof of it in all possible cases. We can do neither 
of these things. But we hold that this thesis possesses all the 
probability that accompanies the inductive process ; we hold that 
were our science sufficiently advanced, we could, the state of the 
brain being given, thence deduce the corresponding thought or 
sentiment ; and, conversely, the sentiment or thought being given, 
we could deduce the state of the brain. Leibnitz, whose genius 
was all-penetrating, had a glimpse of this truth at a period when 
science scarce allowed a suspicion of its existence. ' All that 
ambition led Caesar's mind to do is represented also in his body ; 
there is a certain state of the body which answers even. to the 
most abstract reasonings.' 

We might have deduced our proposition from what was before 
said ; for if it be admitted that the physical and the moral differ 
not objectively but subjectively — not in their nature, but as to the 
mode in which they are known to us \ if vital phenomena are 
on the one hand specially mental, and on the other specially 
physical, but yet such that each of them, taken in its totality, is 
ever both physical and mental ; then it is plain that every psych- 
ological phenomenon supposes a corresponding physiological state.. 
But we have thought it best to establish this truth directly, and by 
experience, independently of all hypotheses. We need only add 
that here, as everywhere, our solution is restricted to phenomena,, 
and has nothing to do with the ultimate reasons of things. 



CHAPTER III. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEREDITY. 



If we sum up what has been said in the two foregoing chapters,, 
we shall see that in consequence of these researches the problem, 
What is the cause of psychological heredity ? is very much sim- 
plified. 

In the first place, we endeavoured to show that the general 



-268 Heredity. 



relations of the physical and the moral may be conceived as a 
relation of equivalence, so that in the last analysis there exists 
only one species of phenomena, neither material nor spiritual, but 
which, from a purely human point of view, we call physiological 
when we grasp them from without and through the senses, and 
psychological when we grasp them from within and through the 
consciousness. As we have remarked, however, this is but an 
hypothesis, the value of which will be better and better deter- 
mined in the progress of the sciences ; but the fate of which is of 
no importance for the experimental portion of our thesis. 

In the next place, passing from speculation to facts, from meta- 
physics to biology, we showed, on the ground of experience, that 
it is extremely probable, if not certain, that every mental state 
implies a corresponding nervous state, and vice versa; so that, 
were our science more perfect, we might from the mental state of 
a being infer the nervous state, and from the nervous state infer 
the mental state. 

If these premisses be accepted, the problem of the cause may- 
be more clearly stated. In fact, all our science consists in ap- 
prehending relations between simple phenomena or groups of 
phenomena. We have here two groups of phenomena, the one 
physiological and, above all, nervous, the other psychological; 
from the standpoint of heredity there can only subsist between 
these one or other of these three relations : — 

i. A simple relation of simultaneity, physiological and psycho- 
logical heredity being parallel, though entirely independent of one 
another. 

2. A relation of causality, psychological heredity being con- 
sidered as the cause, and physiological heredity as the effect. 

3. Another relation of causality, but with physiological heredity 
.as the cause, and psychological heredity as the effect. 

We will not stop to examine the first hypothesis, which appears 
to us to be an artificial question. It rests on the strange notion of 
two substances, the body and the soul, perfectly distinct, entirely 
different, and so alien to one another, that it is matter for sur- 
prise to find them travelling together and in constant relations 
with one another. The question might have been put in this 
form in the seventeenth century, but in the present state of science 



Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 269 

it is no longer acceptable ; and it would not be rash to assert that 
the great minds who in that age professed this dualism would now 
be the first to reject it. We have seen that in our time there is a 
growing tendency to admit an intimate correlation, a mutual inter- 
change between the two orders of phenomena, so that the 
difficulty is not to unite but to separate them ; and we could not 
explain why this radical dualism is still so accredited, did we not 
know that it is yet more difficult to extirpate an old error than to 
bring a new truth into acceptance. 

Without insisting on this hypothesis, which in itself alone in- 
cludes all the difficulties of both the others, let us proceed to 
examine them. 

1. It might be held that psychological heredity is the cause of 
physiological heredity. This proposition is evidently the one that 
is maintained by the idealists and the animists. We are not aware 
that they have laid it down in precise and explicit form, and this 
no doubt because they have been very little concerned with the 
problem of heredity, which is chiefly physiological. And, indeed, 
it is worthy of remark that while spiritualistic philosophy has been 
much occupied with the future destiny of the soul, it has bestowed 
very little thought on its origin. It has always inquired whither 
we are going, and but seldom whence we come. And yet these 
two problems are intimately connected, and are both equally 
mysterious. 

Theologians have taken more pains to work out this question, 
It is one that is closely connected with the foundation whereon 
Christianity rests, the transmission of original sin. Their opinions 
are not very harmonious, but are of no importance here. They 
may be reduced under two heads. 

Some have taught that God, the only and the immediate origin 
of souls, creates, at the instant of conception, a special soul for 
the body which comes into being. 

Others hold that all souls are sprung, like all bodies, from the 
first man, and that they are propagated in the same way — that is, by 
generation. This would seem to be the opinion of the majority. 
Tertullian, St. Jerome, and Luther held it, as also two philosophers, 
Malebranche and Leibnitz. The latter held it to be c the only 
doctrine wherein philosophy can harmonize with religion/ 



2 7o Heredity. 



If we might be allowed to have an opinion on this subject, we 
should say that the second opinion would appear the more or- 
thodox. But we will take the philosophical point of view, and 
since the idealists say nothing about the relation between the two 
forms of heredity, we shall have to indicate that relation ourselves. 
In their system, their logic would lead us to view this relation as 
follows : — 

We will start with the fertilized ovum, that source of every- 
thing that lives. This ovum is not merely an aggregation of 
molecules, which the physiologist studies under the microscope ; 
it is also, and above all, a force, that is to say, a manifestation of the 
soul. Admit if you will (for we idealists have no great liking for 
this hypothesis) that this soul inherits from its parents certain 
determinate forms of sensitive, intellectual, and voluntary activity, 
and that it contains these virtually. The soul thus constituted 
now sets about fashioning its body. Follow its labours from that 
moment which caused Harvey so much astonishment, when he 
saw slender threads like those of a spider's web, stretch out from 
one corner to another of the matrix, and then saw this network 
forming a sac which held a white liquid in which appeared the 
punctum saliens. Follow this evolution, whose aspect changes 
sometimes from hour to hour, and whose instability affects the 
most essential no less than the most accessory portions, so that 
it might be said that the unseen workman is feeling his way, and 
that he completes his work only after many a mistake. Pursue 
your observations to the moment when embryonic life is at an end 
and extra-uterine life begins, and then see how evolution still goes 
on, until the being is fully constituted ; and you must confess, 
perhaps unwillingly, that all this is wonderful work, which, in spite 
of errors, anomalies, and deviations, is not the effect of chance, 
and. that it is not without intelligence, though without conscious-^ 
ness. And observe : here the soul is the cause, the organism the 
effect; consequently, the conclusion is quite natural that the nature 
of the soul implies that of the body, and that the ground of 
physiological heredity is to be sought in psychological heredity. 

Thus, as we believe, and without weakening it at all, this pro- 
position might be maintained. As for transcendental idealism, 
which regards as simply physiological all that does not appertain 



Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 271 

to pure intellect ' beyond time and space/ we have already spoken 
of it when treating of the heredity of the intellectual faculties. 

If we examine this doctrine, we shall find that it is with it as 
with all metaphysical hypotheses ; we might refute it, but we can- 
not extirpate it. The great objection appears reducible to this: 
that the idea of generation, which is its basis, is utterly unintelli- 
gible from the idealistic point of view. The idea of generation, 
in the psychological sense, might be understood in the hypothesis 
of the equivalence or mutual transformation of two groups of 
phenomena which are regarded as essentially identical. But that 
is not the thesis of the idealist. In his view there exists but one 
only substance, thought, and of this all others are the manifesta- 
tions. The idea of generation and hereditary transmission results 
from experience, and can be given only in experience; if these 
phenomena are full of mystery they are none the less real, since 
we may track their course, their evolution. But when you apply 
them to the ideal, the supersensual order, they represent nothing ; 
they are but metaphors, empty words, hollow abstractions, since 
there are no concrete things to which they may be referred. 

About a century ago, Wollaston, a spiritualistic, even a Christian 
philosopher, justly said in his essay, TJie Religion of Nature 
Delineated, that in the purely ideal order, the fact of generation is 
unintelligible. 'We should have to explain clearly,' says he, 'what 
we mean, when we say that a man can transmit the soul, as it is 
not easy to conceive how thought, or. how a thinking substance, 
could be produced like the branch of a tree. Indeed, we do not 
see how the expression can be employed, even in a metaphysical 
sense. We should have to define whether this generation proceeds 
from one, or from both of the parents. If from both, then it 
follows that one branch may be the product of two different trunks, 
a thing unexampled in all nature ; and yet such a supposition 
would be more naturally made with reference to vines and plants, 
than to intellectual beings, which are simple and incomposite sub- 
stances. . . . From these considerations we are led to the conclu- 
sion that there is no other substance save matter ; that the soul, 
resulting only from the disposition of the body, must be born with 
it, of father or mother, or both ; and that the generation of the 
soul is a consequence of the generation of the body.' Wollaston 



272 Heredity. 



regards this conclusion as materialistic, and, as always occurs in 
such a case, he sacrifices facts to hypotheses, and argues against 
heredity. But, as we need have no fears of that bugbear, let us 
examine the last remaining hypothesis. 

2. This hypothesis regards physiological heredity as the cause 
of psychological heredity. Of course, we speak here only of the 
immediate and secondary cause, of cause in the order of pheno- 
mena — that is to say, the invariable antecedent. So understood, 
this solution appears to us the only one that can be accepted. 

No one questions the influence of the physical on the moral, 
only it is commonly regarded as transitory, momentary, or at least 
constantly variable. Thus an excessive absorption of alcohol will 
produce confusion of thought \ a certain nervous state will cause 
delirium ; the introduction of hasheesh into the organism will give 
a feeling of beatitude. These and similar phenomena are very 
striking, though, in fact, of no great importance. But it is of im- 
portance to remark that to that habitual, customary state of the 
organism which we call temperament, or constitution, there must 
correspond an habitual, customary state of the mind. This admits 
of no doubt, but it is forgotten. But if we bear in mind the truth 
that the influence of the physical on the moral is permanent ; that 
it is exerted by means of infinitesimal, but incessantly renewed 
acts; that there exists a necessary correlation between those two 
orders of existence which we call body and soul, and this no less 
as regards secondary and transient, than as regards fundamental 
and permanent states, which are, as it were, the ground on which 
phenomena are projected : we shall see that, a permanent phy- 
siological state implying a correspondent psychological state, 
physiological heredity must imply psychological heredity. It were 
puerile to object here that oftentimes a person resembles one of 
his parents in feature, form, and temperament, though differing in 
mind ; for plainly the important point here is the heredity of the 
organic conditions of the mind, i.e. the brain. As we have seen, 
the organism is not always transmitted entire, and its transmission 
presents many puzzling anomalies. 

Physiological heredity will be admitted without hesitation. It 
seems perfectly natural that the organism which is begotten should 
be like that which begat it. This all understand, or think they 



Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 273 



understand. But why not view psychological heredity in the same 
way? Apart from prejudice, routine, and preconceived ideas, 
which will not give way, the reason is that, rightly enough, people 
find the idea of generation, as applied to the soul, unintelligible. 
But all becomes plain if we connect psychological heredity, as 
effect, with physiological heredity, as cause. 

We see, then, that this relation of causality between the two 
heredities is only a particular case of the relations of physical and 
moral. Its only peculiarity is, that here psychical heredity corre- 
sponds with permanent tendencies, not only in the individual, but 
also in the race, the family. Further, whereas physiological 
heredity is immediate, psychological heredity is indirect, mediate. 
The organism is transmitted directly; and if, together with the 
organism, the nervous diathesis of the parents is transmitted, their 
mental aptitudes are likewise transmitted by this intermediary. 

It will, perhaps, be asked, seeing that we assert a perfect corre- 
spondence between nervous and psychical phenomena, why we 
consider mental heredity as an effect of physiological heredity. 
Might we not reverse the proposition ? 

We have already combated that thesis. But, independently of 
the negative reasons given, there is one which seems to us positive. 
It is, that experience shows mental development to be always and 
everywhere subject to organic conditions, while it does not show 
the converse to be true in a general way. 

If there is any order of phenomena that is unequivocally worthy 
of being called psychological, it is the facts of consciousness. But 
consciousness presupposes for its production definite organic con- 
ditions. If they do not exist, there is no consciousness ; and 
when they disappear, consciousness is at an end. And it may be 
remarked, that as regards the brain, consciousness does not stand 
in any vague, general relations. Though physiologists still debate 
as to whether the important point in the brain, considered as a 
psychological organ, is its weight, or its chemical constitution, or 
the number of its convolutions, or its form, or its type, it is likely 
that each of these conditions possesses a special importance of its 
own. Thus, it may be affirmed that an adult human brain weigh- 
ing less than two pounds induces that mental state which we call 
idiocy. 



2 74 Heredity. 



When, therefore, we say that mental evolution depends on cere- 
bral evolution, and, consequently, that psychological heredity 
depends on physiological, we state a plain truth of experience, a 
generalization drawn from an immense number of facts. Logically, 
then, the onus probandi lies with idealism; it is for the idealists 
to upset our proposition, not for us to disprove theirs. This is 
a point in logic too often overlooked, to which we would for a 
moment call attention. It sometimes happens that a good cause 
is compromised, because we bring all our strength to bear against 
the opposite opinion, instead of simply defending our own. A 
metaphysician, reviving an opinion of Descartes, might hold, as 
I have heard men hold, the hypothesis of animals being mere 
machines, and might defy us to prove its falsity. It is possible ; but 
it is enough for us to reply that the metaphysician has to prove it. 
Every doctrine that is based on experience and analogy, and that 
is in accord with the general laws of the universe, must be re- 
garded as true until the contrary is proved. Of course it may be 
false, but, at least, it has in its favour presumptions that it is true, 
and its upholders are under no obligation to refute the opposite 
doctrines, so long as they are only likely or probable. Such, we 
take it, is our position in regard to the idealistic thesis. That is, 
our doctrine rests on experience, against which an a priori theory 
is of no weight. 

Still, we should not be surprised if to some it savours strongly of 
materialism. To this difficulty, we might in the first place reply, 
that if it is true it must nevertheless be accepted, whatever its 
character ; that it is impossible to protest too strongly against an 
unphilosophical tendency which would judge doctrines, not accord- 
ing to their worth, but according to the brand they bear ; and that 
philosophy cannot approve such a tendency without postponing 
truth to something else — that is to say, without committing suicide. 
We might also remark that, for us, materialism is only a phantom 
that disappears so soon as you face it resolutely ; it is like ghosts, 
which alarm only those who believe in them. But it is better to 
meet the difficulty face to face, and to show that the objection is 
without force. 

In the first place, it is clear so long as we confine ourselves to 
the investigation of second and immediate causes — and we shall 



Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 275 

again repeat that our investigation goes no further — the given solu- 
tion cannot be either materialistic or spiritualistic. To connect 
psychological with physiological heredity is simply to state a fact, 
and it is for experience alone to say whether the affirmation is 
true or false. 

But if it be desired at all hazards to raise the insoluble question 
of the ultimate cause, this is our answer : A materialistic doctrine 
is no doubt one that desires to explain all things, and in particular 
the phenomena of mind, by the properties of matter, matter 
being regarded as the sole reality. But we have shown that such 
a doctrine is an utter illusion, inasmuch as the concept of matter 
is finally resolved into notions of force, resistance, colour, motion, 
and so forth, all of which are data of consciousness ; so that it 
might, without paradox, be asserted that the substructure of matter 
is mind. 

We may remark that our solution is perfectly reconcilable with 
this metaphysical hypothesis — that is to say, with the extremest 
idealism. In fact, the only difference between us is one only of 
position; we reason from the standpoint of experience, the idealist 
from the standpoint of the absolute. We debate the question only 
within the strict bounds of experience ; the idealist goes in search 
of perfect integration, because, to his eyes, nothing is known so 
long as we know only the relative. 

Further, it is said that materialism is that doctrine which from 
the inferior deduces the superior, from the worse the better. Is 
not this what we have just been doing, when subordinating 
mental heredity to organic ? 

If the nature of the matter be considered, it will be seen that 
this question has no place here. Our subject is only one case 
in the vast science of the relations between the physical and the 
moral. That science does not inquire what is body, or what 
spirit, nor is it required to subordinate either of these to the 
other. It is naturally divided into two parts : the influence of the 
organism on mental manifestations, and the influence of mental 
manifestations on the organism. To the first part belongs the 
question of heredity. It is thus only a small portion of a very 
extensive science, which itself lies outside of metaphysics. 

Heredity, thus understood, appears to us to be merely one of 



276 Heredity. 



the many physiological influences to which mental development 
is subject; but it is a mistake to suppose that this implies a 
metaphysical solution. It is true that by the law of heredity, the 
higher is subordinated to the lower ; but it would be to go beyond 
experience, and to risk a wholly gratuitous assertion, to assert 
that heredity absolutely proves the dependence of the higher on 
the lower, of the better on the worse. 



11. 

Thus to the question originally stated, ' What is the cause of 
psychological heredity?' we may reply, not transcending the 
domain of experience, i Physiological heredity.' Because the 
organism, and in particular the nervous system, is transmissible, 
therefore the various modes of sensation, instinct, imagination,, 
intellect, sentiment, are also transmissible. Psychological heredity 
being thus referred to physiological, as to its immediate cause r 
we have to inquire the cause of this latter, and to ask how 
physiological heredity is produced. 

In the present state of biology we cannot hope for any positive 
explanation of heredity. We are reduced to hypothesis. The 
most recent of these, and the best wrought out, is that of 
Darwin, in his Variation of Animals and Plants tinder Domesti- 
cation, the broad outlines of which are found in Spencer's 
Principles of Biology. It bears the name of pangenesis. 

To understand it aright, we must first remember that con- 
temporary physiology looks on every living body, regardless 
of its unity, as an aggregate of cells in prodigious numbers, each 
of which has a life of its own, and possesses the fundamental 
properties of life — nutrition, by which it is ever assimilating and 
disassimilating ; evolution, by which it grows in volume and be- 
comes complicated into more perfect and more numerous parts ; 
reproduction, in virtue of which each cell can produce another, 
that cell a third, and so on. Virchow has shown that a single 
cell may be diseased ; so that it may be said that this automatic 
element plays in the organism the same part as the individual in 
the State, having a certain degree of independence, though con- 
stituting an integral part of the body social. 



Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 277 

A curious instance of the power of reproduction in the cell is 
found in the begonia phyllomaniaca. If a piece of the leaf of 
this plant be taken, and planted in suitable soil, maintained at 
a proper temperature, a young begonia will spring from it \ and 
so small is the fragment that is capable of producing an entire 
plant, that a single leaf may produce about one hundred plants. 1 
Nor is this all, for each plant so produced in turn develops on 
its shoots and on its leaves myriads of similar cells, inheriting the 
same property of becoming, in their turn, like plants. Thus the 
original cell, on leaving the mother plant, inherits not only 
the power of self-reproduction, but multiplies it, and distributes 
it without any diminution of its energy to all the cells of the 
plant it produces, and this for countless generations. 

To explain this power of reproduction and hereditary trans- 
mission in living beings in general, Darwin offers the provisional 
hypothesis of pangenesis, ' which implies that each of the atoms 
or units constituting an organism reproduces itself. ' 

It is almost universally admitted, he tells us, that the cells, 
propagated by spontaneous division, preserve the same nature 
and are ultimately converted into different substances and bodily 
tissues. Alongside of this mode of multiplication, I suppose 
that the cells, prior to their conversion into formed and perfectly 
passive material, emit minute grains or atoms which freely circulate 
through the entire system, and when they find sufficient nutrition 
afterwards develop into cells like those from which they came. 
These atoms we will call gemmules. We assume that they are 
transmitted by parents to their descendants, and that usually they 
develop in the generation immediately following, though for several 
generations they may be transmitted in the dormant state and 
develop at a later period. It is supposed that gemmules are 
emitted by each cell or unit, not only during its adult state, but 
during all its states of development. Finally, we assume that the 
gemmules have a mutual attraction for one another, and hence 
their aggregation into germs and sexual elements. Thus, strictly 
.speaking, it is not either the reproductive elements or the germs 



1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology, vol. i. § 65. 



278 He7 r edity. 



that produce new organisms, but rather the cells themselves, or 
units constituting the whole body. 1 

It may be observed that no valid objection can be drawn from 
the extreme minuteness of these gemmules, our notions of size 
being purely relative. When we bear in mind that the ascaris 
may produce about 64,000,000 ova, and a single orchid nearly 
as many million seeds ; and that the organic particles emitted 
by scent-secreting animals, and the contagious molecules of certain 
diseases, must be of excessive tenuity, the objection will not 
appear very weighty. 

Hence, ' we must consider each living being as a microcosm,, 
made up of a multitude of organisms capable of self-reproduc- 
tion, of inconceivable minuteness, and as numerous as the stars 
of heaven.' This hypothesis enables Darwin to explain a great 
number of phenomena, very different in appearance, which, how- 
ever, physiology regards as essentially identical. Among these 
we may name gemmiparity, or reproduction from buds, nssiparity r 
where reproduction is effected by spontaneous or artificial division, 
sexual generation, parthenogenesis, alternate generation, the de- 
velopment of the embryo, repair of the tissues, growth of new 
members in place of those which are lost (as occurs in the case 
of the lobster, the salamander and the snail) — in short, all modes- 
of reproduction whatsoever, and all the modes and all the varieties 
of heredity. 

We have seen that a distinction may be drawn between characters- 
which are developed and those which are simply transmitted. 
Transmission may take place without development, as is proved 
by the very numerous facts of atavism and reversional heredity, 
whether under the direct or the collateral form. This phenome- 
non, which we have compared with alternate generations, is very 
well explained by Darwin's hypothesis. The common fact of a 
grandfather transmitting to his grandson, by his daughter, cha- 
racters which she does not or cannot possess, can only be under- 
stood on the supposition that in the daughter they exist in the 
latent state; or, to give a physiological basis to this idea, gemmules 



1 Darwin, Variation, etc., vol. ii. chap. xvii. 



Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 279 

are transmitted to the second generation, and preserved there, 
which are developed only in the third. 

Darwin also explains how modifications of bodily or mental 
habits may be hereditary. ' According to our view, we need only 
suppose that certain cells come to be modified, as well in their 
structure as in their functions, and then they give out gemmules 
similarly modified . . . When a psychic attribute, a mental habit, 
or insanity is hereditary, we must hold that there has really taken 
place a transmission of some effective modification, and this, on 
our hypothesis, would imply that gemmules springing from modified 
nerve-cells are transmitted to the descendants.' Of course these 
modified habits become fixed only in time, since the organism 
must subsist amid novel conditions for a considerable period, so 
that these may act upon it, modify its cells, and make possible the 
transmission of a larger and larger number of modified cells. 

In the preceding remarks we have reasoned only from physio- 
logical data. But we know that in the question of heredity the 
antithesis of psychological and physiological is a simple difference 
of standpoint. These cells and gemmules are not brute, inani- 
mate matter ; they are possessed of force, of life, of tendencies, and 
we have seen that it is as difficult to conceive of the material 
without the spiritual as of the spiritual without the material. There- 
fore the hypothesis is applicable as well to mental as to organic 
heredity, and if it holds good for the one, it holds good also for 
the other. It may, in fact, be seen how well the two orders appear 
to correspond. 

In the physiological order, at its lowest stage, we have as an 
irreducible element the cell, or physiological unit, possessed of a 
life of its own. From the consensus of countless lives of this kind 
results the general life of the being whose unity appears to us as 
a resultant, a harmony. This harmony, in proportion as we ascend 
the scale of organisms, tends more and more to perfect unity, with- 
out ever reaching that ideal. 

In the psychological order, at its lowest stage, we have as the 
irreducible element or psychological unit, force as it exists in every 
cell, or, at least, nerve-power as it exists in every nerve-cell. From 
the consensus of all these infinitesimal psychical acts, centralized 
in the ganglia, and afterwards in the brain, results psychological 



280 Heredity. 



life, which, in proportion as we ascend the scale of being, passes 
from the simultaneous to the successive form — which is the neces- 
sary condition of consciousness — and tends more and more to- 
ward perfect unity, personality, the ego, without ever attaining it 
absolutely. 

Thus the parallelism is complete between these two orders of 
facts, which at bottom are only one ; and so we can understand, 
or at least suspect, how the two orders of heredity may flow from 
the same cause. 1 Enough, however, has been said hypothetically, 
and we must conclude. 

To sum up : we think we have proved that psychological 
heredity has its cause in physiological heredity, and that this 
cannot be reasonably disputed. The two heredities, being thus 
reduced to one, we again sought for the cause of heredity, and 
found only a hypothesis, probable indeed, but which, lying beyond 
the limits of experience, cannot be verified. The definite result of 
these researches — and the point is so important that it must be 
again and again repeated — is that heredity is identity as far as is 
possible ; it is one being in many. ' The cause of heredity,' says 
Hackel, ' is the partial identity of the materials which constitute 
the organism of the parent and child, and the division of this 
substance at the time of reproduction/ Heredity, in fact, is to be 
considered only as a kind of growth, like the spontaneous division 
of a unicellular plant of the simplest organization. 

Having studied the Facts, the Laws, and the Causes, we have 
now to look at the practical side of heredity, the Consequences. 



1 Compare the very bold and ingenious hypothesis of Herbert Spencer (Psy- 
chology, 2nd Edition, § 139), of which the following is the substance. Our 
sciences, our arts, our civilization, all social phenomena, however multitudinous 
and complicated, are reduced on final analysis to a certain number of feelings 
and thoughts. These in turn are referred to the primitive sensations, to the 
data of the live senses. The senses are reducible to touch. Physiology goes 
far to confirm the saying of Democritus, that all the senses are modifications of 
touch. Touch itself has its basis in those primordial properties which distin- 
guish organic from inorganic matter. And many facts point to the conclusion 
that sensibility of all kinds takes its rise out of those fundamental processes 
of integration and disintegration, in which life in its primitive form consists, 



PART FOURTH. 

THE CONSEQUENCES. 

Thus out of savages come at length our Newtons and Shakespeares. 

Herbert Spencer. 



( z*3 ) 



CHAPTER I. 

HEREDITY AND THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 



The idea of progress is quite modern. Its originators in the- 
seventeenth century were Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, and, above all, 
Leibnitz. In the eighteenth century it was the object of a lively 
faith for all the philosophers of that period. In the nineteenth 
century it has become almost a commonplace. Still, in its current 
form, it is vague and incomplete. 

First, it is vague. The word progress has no very definite 
meaning. For some it represents merely the act of advancing, for 
others it means improvement, which is a very different thing. 
Moreover, the common view accepts progress as a fact, without 
inquiring after its law, its cause. Is it a chance product, or has it 
a law, and if so, what is the law ? What is the hidden form in 
the nature of things ? What the productive power that determines 
its being ? These questions are not even asked. 

It is incomplete, and this is a still graver defect. By an un- 
scientific illusion, but one that is perfectly natural to man, we look 
at progress only from the human point of view. In the view of 
nearly every one progress means the transition from bad to 
middling, from middling to good, from good to better — in short, 
improvement. As history shows that humanity generally advances 
from the less to the more perfect, as we see that as time goes on 
manners tend to become milder, life easier, habits more moral, social 
institutions more just, political institutions more liberal, knowledge 
more diffused, and beliefs more reasonable, we conclude that in 
spite of all retrogressive movements, in spite of exceptions, illu- 
sions, and disappointments, the victory after all is with progress — 
that is to say, the improvement of man and his moral surroundings ; 



.284 Heredity. 



and we say with Herder, that humanity is like a drunken man, 
who, after many a step forward and many a step backward, yet at 
last reaches his destination. Progress, so understood, is a human 
fact, restricted to the sphere of the moral and political sciences, 
.and limited to history, as having the same bounds as liberty. 

A more exact, and at the same time a broader, view would lead 
us to see in human progress only a part of the total progress, and 
to substitute for this equivocal expression the more appropriate 
terms, evolution or development. This substitute is highly 
important, for in the place of a human, subjective, hypothetical 
opinion, it sets a cosmic, objective, scientific system. Progress no 
longer appears as the law of humanity only, but as the law of 
universal nature. 

The idea of evolution in this wide and true sense will doubtless 
.ever be considered one of the grandest philosophic conceptions of 
•the nineteenth century. Born of the study of the natural sciences, 
of religions, languages, history, of all that changes and lives, it has 
in turn given to these studies a new meaning, has quickened and 
renovated them. Hegel was the first to attempt the grand syn- 
thesis which must one day reduce all things under the law of a 
perpetual coming into being. His metaphysical hypothesis may 
have perished, as so many more have perished, but the radical idea 
of his system remains. Better still, new aspects of the law of 
evolution have since appeared in the whole field of science. To 
cite only one instance, the bold hypothesis which takes its name 
from Darwin has given a new shape to the question of the origin 
of species, and has brought it to bear on the highest problems of 
.philosophy. 

The latest essay in philosophical synthesis based on the idea of 
evolution is the work of Herbert Spencer. This synthesis, the 
outlines of which are given in his essays, while its definite form is 
given in his first principles, is intended to cover and explain in 
detail the phenomena of biology, psychology, sociology, and 
morals. It not only possesses the merit, as being recent, of includ- 
ing a larger number of facts and of partial doctrines ; its true merit 
consists in substituting for Hegel's subjective, metaphysical method 
an objective, scientific one — the method of the natural sciences. 
Thus the law of evolution — stripped of all teleological ideas, and 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 285 

having as its result not man's welfare but the necessary develop- 
ment of the cosmos ; not progress in the purely human sense, and 
our advance toward perfection, but the advance of the universe 
toward an ever-increasing complexity — may be referred to the 
laws of mechanics, to the ultimate laws of motion ; and thus the 
problem of the universe, considered from the standpoint of 
evolution, becomes a problem of dynamics. 

It would carry us beyond our subject to sketch this antithesis 
here. It will suffice for us to note its chief features, and to indicate 
the cause and the law of evolution. 

Considered in general, every evolution may be defined as an 
integration ; and this explains, in a certain sense, how it is always 
a transition from less to greater. Its law is the transition from 
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the uniform to the 
multiform, from the less to the more coherent, from the indefinite 
to the definite — these various expressions indicating the various 
aspects of one and the same change, which is essentially identical. 
Thus it is that in astronomy evolution explains the transition from 
the almost homogeneous primitive nebulae to our solar system, with 
its planets and satellites varying so widely in density, velocity and 
distance from the centre ; in geology, the transition from the rela- 
tively homogeneous primitive igneous mass to the earth as it is, 
the surface of which alone appears to us so heterogeneous ; in 
biology, the transition from the inferior organisms of the primitive 
ages to the multiform fauna and flora of the present - in psych- 
ology, the transition from undeveloped and embryonic forms of 
mind to states more and more complex ; in sociology, the transition 
from the simple societies of primitive times to the most complicated 
and most heterogeneous societies of our epoch ; in history, the 
development of languages, mechanic arts and fine arts, and their 
ever multiplying subdivisions. 

Thus evolution consists in an integration, a transition from 
simple to complex. But this uniform process presupposes some 
fundamental necessity from which it results. This universal law 
implies a universal cause. The reason of this universal trans- 
formation of homogeneous into heterogeneous is this, that every 
active form produces more than one change, and every cause more 
than one effect. Thus a shock will produce motion, sound, heat,. 



286 Heredity. 



and light. A little small-pox virus in the organism will produce 
very numerous morbid phenomena. An economic reform will 
lead to many industrial and social consequences. Everywhere, in 
short, even when the cause is simple, the effects are manifold. 

Evolution thus understood, and both as to its law and as to its 
cause reduced to 6 a purely physical interpretation ' of phenomena, 
offers a scientific character which is not possessed by the current 
doctrine of progress. Then, too, the latter, being concerned only 
with human welfare, and considering that as the final cause of all 
change, finds itself much embarrassed in view of sundry incontest- 
able facts which show that humanity at certain periods stays and 
retraces its steps. Evolution explains these facts. The develop- 
ment theory, as Lyell well observes, implies no necessary progres- 
sion. It is possible for a new race to be of simpler structure, and 
of less developed understanding, than those which it displaces ; a 
slight advantage is sufficient to insure it the victory over its rivals. 
The law of evolution accounts equally well for progress and for 
what is called degradation — that is, a retrograde movement towards 
an inferior structure, or a lower form of dynamism. It is sufficient 
if a being so degraded, whether physically or morally, is better 
adapted to its new conditions of existence than a being more highly 
endowed. 

Now that we have fixed a precise meaning on the words evolu- 
tion, development, and progress, we can see how this law governs 
the whole question of the consequences of heredity. In this 
portion of our work Ave propose to show how heredity has con- 
tributed to the formation of certain intellectual or sensitive 
faculties, and of certain moral habits. We can now have a 
glimpse of this truth. Heredity and evolution are the two neces- 
sary factors of every stable modification in the domain of life. 

Suppose evolution without heredity, and every change becomes 
transitory : every modification whatever, whether of good or bad, 
useful or hurtful, disappears with the individual. Evolution con- 
fined within these narrow limits, loses all significance and all force ; 
it is nothing but an accident, without any value. 

Suppose heredity without evolution, and there is nothing but 
the monotonous conservation of the same types, fixed once for all. 
Physiological characters, instincts, intellectual and moral faculties, 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 287 

are preserved and transmitted without modification. Nothing in- 
creases, nothing diminishes, nothing changes. 

On the other hand, suppose both evolution and heredity, and 
then life and variation become possible. Evolution produces 
physiological and psychological modifications; habit fixes these in 
the individual, heredity fixes them in the race. These modifica- 
tions as they accumulate, and in course of time, become organic, 
make new modifications possible in the succession of generations ; 
thus heredity becomes in a manner a creative power. This fact 
of the heredity of acquired modifications has made its appearance 
often in the course of the present work ; though we shall have to 
examine it in detail further on, it will be useful to dwell upon it 
here for a little while, as it will give us a better understanding of 
the relations between heredity and the law of evolution. 

In the physiological introduction we showed that acquired 
modifications can certainly be transmitted. We have seen, for 
instance, that animals artificially made epileptic transmit that 
morbid disposition to their descendants. We have also seen 
that this point is possessed of some difficulty, for facts seem to 
show that these deviations from the type tend to return to the 
normal state, and that the law is, that accidental states are not 
perpetuated, but that, after subsisting for a few generations at 
longest, they first grow fainter, and then disappear. Thus we 
should return to the difficulty we met at the outset, that we should 
have evolution without heredity, or at best with only a restricted 
heredity, yielding no results of any importance. The difficulty, 
however, is only an apparent one. Even were we to accept the 
hypothesis of a return to the primitive type, which is the one most 
at variance with our theory, it will be observed that this return 
has no place except when a race is left to itself. The experience 
of breeders shows that certain physiological characters can be 
thoroughly fixed and perpetuated by continual selection, notwith- 
standing some exceptions and cases of reversion ; but education 
acts upon the mental faculties precisely as the breeder's art acts 
on the organism and its functions. We shall see that the capacity 
for seizing abstract ideas, and for complying with the conditions 
of civilized life, becomes fixed only after a considerable length of 
time in certain races ; these, left to themselves, return also to the 



288 Heredity. 



primitive type. Thus there is established in the individual, between 
the heredity of the natural characters and that of the acquired 
characters, a conflict, in which nature must win if art does not 
counteract it. Bacon's saying is true of heredity, as of all natural 
laws : Natura non nisi parendo vinciiur. But with the aid of art, 
under the constant influence of education, or of the same moral 
environment, acquired characters become fixed; and then there 
is established in our psychical constitution a second nature, so 
intimately blended with the former, that usually they cannot be 
distinguished. 

To sum up : without the law of evolution, nothing is simpler 
than to determine the consequences of heredity. It would not be 
worth while to study them separately, for they would consist only 
in the indefinite conservation of the same specific characters. But 
with evolution all is different. The living being tends incessantly 
to be modified by causes both internal and external. The internal 
causes determine those spontaneous modifications of the organism 
and of the dynamism which, as we have seen, some authors explain 
by a law of spontaneity, such as a new physical character, or a new 
mental aptitude. By external causes we mean the action of cir- 
cumstances, which have as strong an influence on the moral as on 
the physical being, and which in time tend to fashion it in a certain 
manner. In the battle of life, the struggle for existence, that great 
biological fact which Darwin has so well established that his 
adversaries themselves have accepted it, these modifications con- 
stitute for the individual a probability of its survival, if by them 
it is better adapted to new conditions. They render it possible 
for the living being in the first place to subsist, and then to 
perpetuate itself. Heredity, which is essentially a conservative 
force, tends to transmit to the descendants the whole nature of 
their parents ; as well every deterioration, physical, mental, and 
moral, as every physical, mental, and moral amelioration. The 
blind fatality of its laws regulates not alone progress, but also 
decay. 

Man, therefore, as he comes into the world, is not the impres- 
sionless statue dreamt of by Bonnet and Condillac. Not only is 
he possessed of a certain constitution, a certain nervous organi- 
zation, which predisposes him to feel, to think, and to act after a 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 289 

manner which is peculiar and personal to himself, but we may 
even affirm that the experience of countless generations slumbers 
in him. So far is he from being homogeneous, that all the past 
has contributed to his constituents. The present state of his 
mechanism and his dynamism is the result of innumerable modi- 
fications slowly accumulated 3 and it may be affirmed that were 
heredity to act alone, and were there no crossings, no spontaneous 
variations, no psychical combinations or transformations, the secret 
of which we cannot penetrate, the descendants would be necessarily 
inclined to feel and to think as their ancestors. 

11. 

This hasty statement shows that heredity is one of the chief 
factors of the law of evolution ; that by accumulating slight differ- 
ences, heredity produces effects apparently out of all proportion 
with the original causes. The living being is subject to the action 
of its environment and modified by it ; nor does man, considered 
as a thinking, sentient being, escape this law. Hence we see at 
one time an amelioration, at another a deterioration of his faculties. 
Chance, but especially education, may develop his intellect, his 
character, his imagination, his sentiments; and — since these ac- 
quired modifications are sometimes transmitted by heredity, and, 
in fact, taking everything into account, are mostly transmitted — 
we may say that the evolution of the psychical faculties is a law of 
the intellectual world, and that the gain made by each generation 
is to the advantage of those which follow. But where man has 
discovered a law — that is, an invariable rule — which governs a 
group of phenomena, if these phenomena are within his reach, or 
come under his control, he can modify them, because he holds 
in his hands the mainspring that moves and governs them. Thus 
he is acquainted with the laws of heredity : he knows that they 
exist and act, notwithstanding many exceptions which mask their 
action. Can he turn them to account ? Can he employ them for 
the perfecting of his species ? Let us put the question in clearer 
and more explicit terms. The starting-point is a race of medium 
intelligence, morality, and artistic and industrial capacity. The 
goal is a race, quick of comprehension and expert in action, well- 
disciplined, of gentle manners, and easily adapting itself to the 

u 



290 Heredity. 



complicated forms of civilization. The problem is, how we are to 
raise the masses to the level of those who, at the outset, were 
greatly above them. Can this be done ? 

We would observe, first of all, that so far is this aspiration from 
being chimerical, that every effort of civilization has it and it alone 
in view. But the end is attained by means of education, an 
external agency, different from heredity, which acts from within. 
As we view it, education is unequal to this task. There remains, 
in some natures, a substratum of unintelligent savagery which 
may be overlaid by civilization, but never done away. Hereditary 
transmission alone could modify them. We will return to this 
point hereafter. 1 

From the psychological standpoint, therefore, the only one that 
concerns us here, the question takes this form : Can we, by means 
of selection and heredity, increase in a race the sum of its in- 
telligence and morality ? 

Heredity is an effect — it depends on generation, and generation 
depends on the nature of the agents; it is, therefore, at the root of 
the matter. How assort the parents with a view to the ameliora- 
tion of the race ? This question, simple as it appears, has given 
rise to inextricable disputes, which we thus summarize : — 

Suppose a large family, gifted physically and morally, its members 
healthy, strong, intelligent, active ; assign to them all some one 
talent, that for the stage, for instance, as in the Kemble family. 
Ought the members to intermarry with one another in order to 
fix this talent definitively, and to make it organic, so to speak? 
Some will call such a union desirable, others detestable. There is 
an eager contest in our day over this question of consanguineous 
marriages. Ancient legislation, evidently giving expression to the 
prevailing opinions, and which must have been based as well on 
experience as on prejudice, is not at all unanimous on this point. 
Consanguineous marriages are condemned by the laws of Manu, 
the Mosaic code, the laws of Rome, the decrees of the Christian 
councils, and the texts of the Koran. Thus opinion has been 
adverse to them among nearly all civilized peoples \ yet the ancient 
laws of the Persians and of the Egyptians permitted the marriage 



1 See chap. iii. § 2. 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 291 



of the nearest relatives. In Syria consanguineous marriages were 
common, at least in the reigning families, from the earliest times 
down to the end of the Seleucidse. As for savage races, such 
as the Samoiedes, Tartars, Caribs, American Indians, etc., their 
customs in one place allow such marriages, in another proscribe 
them. Passing from the practical domain of customs to the 
theoretic domain of science, we meet with the same state of 
indecision. 1 

According to Darwin, the consequences of close interbreeding 
in animals, carried on for too long a time, are generally believed 
to be loss of size, of vigour, and of fertility. He cites the opinions 
of several breeders in confirmation of this. Yet 'with cattle there 
can be no doubt that close interbreeding may be long carried on 
advantageously with respect to external characters, and with no 
manifestly apparent evil as far as constitution is concerned.' 
Bates, a well-known breeder, says that 'interbreeding with bad 
stock is ruinous and disastrous, but with first class cattle it may 
be practised safely within certain limits.' A flock of sheep has 
b>een kept up, in France, during sixty years without the intro- 
duction of a single strange ram. With pigs on the other hand 
Hong continued interbreeding is attended with the most disastrous 
results. c Mr. J. Wright, well known as a breeder, crossed a boar 
with his daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter, and so 
on for seven generations ; the result was, that in many instances 
the offspring were sterile, others died, and among those which 
survived a certain number were idiotic, incapable of sucking, or 
walking straight.' As regards birds, Darwin finds a considerable 
number of proofs which condemn unions between the same blood. 
He refuses to consider the question as it concerns man, ' since it 
is there surrounded by prejudice,' still he seems not to be in favour 
of consanguineous marriages. 

Other authors condemn them without reserve, among these 
Prosper Lucas and Dr. Boudin. The latter, taking his stand on a 
great number of facts and figures, considers them as the undoubted 
cause of very many morbid phenomena, several of which concern 

1 Lucas, vol. ii. p. 903 ; Bulletins de la Societe 0? Anthropologic vols. i. iii. 
'iv. and vi. ; Darwin, Variation, etc., vol. ii. ch. xvii. 



292 Heredity. 



the mental life, as, for instance, deaf-muteness, idiocy, and epilepsy. 
In his view, consanguinity is of itself essentially baneful, and deter- 
mines, without the concurrence of any other morbific cause, the 
appearance of many grave diseases and infirmities. 1 

6 History,' says Lucas, ' witnesses to the disastrous consequences 
which it brings on man.' 6 Aristocracies obliged to recruit their 
numbers from among themselves become extinct/ says Niebuhr ;. 
'in the same way often passing through degeneracy, insanity, 
dementia and imbecility.' Esquirol and Spurzheim, at least, give 
this reason for the frequency of mental alienation and of its- 
heredity among the great families of France and England. Deaf- 
muteness in humbler families appears also to have the same origin. 

It would not perhaps be rash to see an effect of consanguinity 
in the premature decline of the Lagidae, and of the Seleucidae. 
The Lagidae from Ptolemy Soter down to Cleopatra and Caesarion 
( — 3 2 3 t^l 3°) reckon sixteen sovereigns, and the Seleucidae, from 
Seleucus Nicator to Antiochus Asiaticus ( — 311 till 64) reckon 
twenty. They often married their sisters, their nieces, or their aunts. 
Moreover, when the marriages were not consanguineous, alliances 
were formed between these two effete families, the Lagidae nearly 
always marrying Seleucidae, and the Seleucidae marrying Lagidae. 
Now, it is certain that these races t were in a state of perpetual 
decay, in proportion as they became more remote from their two 
or three first founders. 

To these many reasons against consanguineous marriages 
nothing but exceptional cases seem to be opposed. Burdach 
attributes good results to consanguinity, but only among animals. 
Dr. Bourgeois wrote the history of his own family, which was the 



1 Memoir de la Societe d* Anthropologic According to Dr. Boudin, the danger 
of consanguineous marriages is shown by the following facts. In Berlin there 
were 

in 10,000 Catholics 3 deaf-mutes 

in 10,000 Protestants 6 ,, 

in 10,000 Jews 27 ,, 

In the United States, in 1840, the negro population, who were given to pro- 
miscuity, showed in Iowa 91 times as many deaf-mutes as the whites. 

These figures, and the inferences drawn from them, have been questioned.. 
See Bulletins de la Societe d? Anthropologic, vols. iii. and iv. 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 293 

issue of a union in the third degree of consanguinity. In the 
course of one hundred and sixty years there were ninety-one 
marriages in that family, sixteen of them consanguineous, and 
yet there resulted neither infirmity nor sterility. Similar facts are 
cited by MM. Voisin and Dalby. There are two small French 
islands, Batz and Bre'hat, in which consanguineous marriages are 
very frequent, yet the population is healthy and vigorous. 

The two opinions may, perhaps, as M. de Quatrefages observes, 
be reconciled. The tendency of heredity is to reproduce the 
whole being ; the child is only a resultant, a compromise between 
the tendencies of both the parents. If these tendencies are the 
same, they are all the more evident in the product. If the parents 
enjoy perfect health, consanguinity will tend to preserve it in their 
descendants, and then, so far from being prejudicial, it will have 
good results. But that perfect equilibrium which constitutes 
physical and moral health may easily be disturbed in the parents, 
and then the consequences will become more and more evident in 
the children. Now, in consanguineous marriages the chances are 
many that this disturbance of equilibrium will be of a like nature 
in both of the parents. Hence it follows that in many cases such 
unions will be injurious, and all the more dangerous in proportion 
as the morbid predispositions common to both parties are more 
marked. ' The consequence we are to draw from all these facts 
would appear to be, that near relationship between father and 
mother is not in itself hurtful, but that, in virtue of the laws govern- 
ing heredity, it oftentimes becomes so ; and hence, in view of the 
eventualities to which consanguinity leads, it is at least prudent to 
avoid consanguineous marriage.' * 

It would therefore appear that the l in and in ' method adopted 
for the improvement of the lower races would have little likelihood 
of success if applied to man, and that we must renounce this plan 
of fixing and of making organic certain intellectual aptitudes. The 
process of crossing families would probably be better. This would 
consist in selecting a pair out of two different families, both pos- 
sessed in a high degree of the particular quality, talent or tendency, 
which it is desired to transmit to the progeny in increased propor- 

1 Quatrefages, Rapport sur les Progrh de V Anthropologie, p. 461. 



294 Heredity. 



tion. This proposed selection has but rarely been attempted, and 
never uninterruptedly. Instances of it might be found in mediaeval 
times, in the golden age of the aristocracy. Often then, when an 
alliance was about to be formed, there was required on both sides 
not only well-authenticated noble descent, but also vigour, valour, 
courage, loyalty, piety — in short, all the chivalric virtues which it 
was desired to transmit to the children. It can hardly be doubted 
that if this selection were carried out methodically it would lead 
to good results for the improvement of the human race. Of course 
there would be many exceptions, many failures, many unforeseen 
anomalies, produced by chance, or by reversional heredity ; the 
phenomena of heredity are too complex and too delicate to be 
produced with the mathematical regularity of a machine; but 
it is probable that the general -result would nevertheless be 
excellent. 

Still, it may be objected that any such method as this would be 
only half successful. Grant that in this way we could perpetuate 
for the common good a nearly constant sum of eminent, illus- 
trious, or merely notable men, or grant, even, that the number of 
such could be increased, there would still remain a far larger" 
number of inferior minds of which heredity would perpetuate the 
deficiencies, just as, ex hypothesis it perpetuates the superior 
qualities of the others. Must we dream that the case admits of no 
remedy ? Must we admit that here the law of competition is in 
force, and that it will in course of time stamp out whatever does 
not rise to a certain level? May we hold that crosses judiciously 
contrived between one class and another might raise up that which 
is beneath, without lowering that which is above ? Would civiliza- 
tion be the gainer? Or would such crosses only produce a 
uniform level of mediocrity ? These questions may be debated, 
but not resolved. 

Some writers hold that a physically and morally superior race, 
when united with an inferior one, lowers itself without raising the 
other, so that all such alliances would constitute a loss to civiliza- 
tion. This opinion is enforced with a hardy logic by the author of 
a voluminous work on the Inequality of Human Races. x In his. 

1 De Gobineau, Essai sur VInigalite des Races Hu7?iaines, 4 vols. 8vo. 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 295 

view, there are three races of men, perfectly distinct and different, 
not by any mere external difference, but by a radical and essential 
one ; the blood of one race is as different from that of another 
* as water is different from alcohol.' These three races are the 
black, the yellow, and the white. The black race, which is unin- 
tellectual, sensual, passionate, abandoning itself to its instincts, 
represents, according to M. de Gobineau, the female element. The 
yellow is the male element ; it possesses a positive mind, a narrow 
intellect, a love of comfort, utilitarian tendencies, and totally lacks 
artistic aptitude. The white is the noble race, gifted with superior 
faculties, and possessing aptitudes for poetry, sciences, and politics. 
Of this noble race the noblest branch is the Aryan, and of this 
branch the noblest family is the Germanic. 

The first two races, left to themselves, are totally incapable of 
attaining to civilization. This power is possessed only by the white 
race. But in lifting the other two out of barbarism the white race 
itself is degraded by contact with them. What the other two 
races gain the white loses, just as when an exquisite wine is mixed 
with wines of inferior quality. Nor is this all ; not only is the 
mongrel race inferior to the white, but also, inasmuch as every 
cross is in itself a cause of degradation, it follows that the white 
blood, though it does not change in quantity, yet loses its virtues 
on occasion of every new cross. From all this the reader will 
conjecture what our author thinks of modern civilization. An 
epoch which, by travel and by the multiplied needs of commerce 
and civilization, brings all peoples into mutual contact, and brings 
about alliances of every description, is, in his eyes, a i horrible con- 
fusion.' The white race, which was uncontaminated in the time of 
the gods, still pure enough in the heroic age, already tainted in 
the days of the aristocracy, has now entered 'the era of unity.' 
When the confusion becomes complete, and when the white blood 
in every human creature shall bear to that of the other races the 
ratio of one to two, then ' the nations, or rather the human herds, 
oppressed by a gloomy somnolence, will live swallowed up in their 
nullity, like buffaloes ruminating in the stagnant puddles of the 
Pontine Marshes. Our shameful descendants will surrender to 
vigorous nature the universal dominion of the earth, and the 
human creature will be no longer her master, but only a guest, 



296 Heredity. 



like the inhabitants of the woods and waters.' Humanity will 
have existed from twelve to fourteen thousand years. 1 

If we accept M. de Gobineau's doctrine, and apply to families 
what he says of races and peoples, the conclusion to be drawn 
from it is evident enough. We should say to them : Beware of 
all admixture, and preserve your blood pure at any cost. Do not 
try to bring up to your own level inferior members of the human 
race, men, peoples, or races, for you would lose far more than 
they could gain. But this conclusion appears to us very rash; 
and though on this point there are many hypotheses and conjec- 
tures, and but few truly scientific assertions, though the facts are 
so contradictory as to warrant every possible interpretation, still 
it seems to us that there are some very good arguments against 
this theory of pure races, this horror for all admixture. 

In the first place, I do not think that, with perhaps the ex- 
ception of China, history presents a single instance of any great 
civilization, without a preliminary mingling of peoples and races. 
Take the Arabs, originally Asiatic. So long as the race remained 
pure, it made little or no progress. Mahomet appeared, and then 
they overran, as conquerors, Asia, Africa, and Spain, giving rise to 
the great civilization of Persia, Damascus, Bagdad, and Cordova. 
The Jewish people, rigidly exclusive as they were, had to admit 
some Syrian, Persian, Phoenician, and Greek elements, in order to 
work out their own civilization. Nor were the indigenous civiliz- 
ations of the New World exempt from this law. The Incas of 
Peru were a superior race that came to that country at a late 
period in its history, probably in the thirteenth century. The 
Aztecs in Mexico, who were conquered by Cortes, had been pre- 
ceded by the Chichimecs and the Toltecs. But not to multiply 
instances, it is evident that civilization, being by its nature a com- 
plex state, a harmony, many dissimilar and even unequal elements 
were needed to form it. The more we advance in the knowledge 

1 M. Gobineau's view has been held in a very mitigated form by M. Perier, 
who, in his Essai sur les Croisements Ethniques, takes chiefly the physiological 
standpoint. He also inclines to the opinion that any race that is endowed 
with any natural gift loses much by crossing. The author, notwithstanding, 
admits that * the people of purest blood is not therefore the least civilized, and 
vice vcrsd. f 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 297 

of nature, the more convinced do we become of this truth : that 
the highest phenomena of thought and life are also the most 
complex, and that, as a general rule, the inferior is always the 
simpler. Civilization has everywhere grown by contact, mixture, 
union. ' The more elements a people gains/ says M. Serres, c the 
more it advances; the life of a people augments in proportion as its 
characteristics are multiplied.' Nor is there anything to prove that 
when two families or two races combine the mixture is rudely 
made, as in the mingling of wines. It may be that talent, cha- 
racters, and new aptitudes may be revealed by the mere fact of 
cross-breeding, just as in chemistry two bodies which combine 
form a third possessing new properties. But ethnic chemistry is 
not sufficiently advanced to warrant this opinion, and therefore we 
must be content with simple conjecture. 

We now return to our original question : When two elements 
cross, one inferior and the other superior, does the latter finally 
get the mastery, so that in the end there is a clear profit for the 
human race ? This problem is far from being solved, especially in 
its psychic aspects, as psychologists have studied it only cursorily 
.and in a general way. 

Half-breeds have furnished the chief materials for this study, for 
in them it is more easily pursued. The mixed elements being 
widely different — usually blacks and whites — are naturally mag- 
nified, so that we can study them, as it were, through a microscope. 

Some naturalists regard these mixed races as doomed to dis- 
appear, either because the race has but little fecundity, or because 
the individual possesses but little vital resistance. Yet, according 
to M. Omalius d'Halloy, if we take the whole population of 
the globe as 750,000,000, the half-breeds would count at least 
10,000,000. In Mexico and in South America they have in three 
centuries risen to be about one-fifth of the total population. 
D'Orbigny, who has closely studied man in America, is a strong 
partizan of cross-breeding between nations. ' Among the nations 
in America/ says he, 'the product is always superior to the two 
types that are mixed.' Finally, in Polynesia, and in the Marquesas 
Isles in particular, while the indigenous population is falling away 
with fearful rapidity, the half-breeds are increasing in numbers, so 
that this region seems destined to be re-peopled by a race half 



298 Heredity. 



European and half Polynesian. If we admit, with some authors, 
that it needs several generations, or even several centuries, for 
a crossed race to adapt itself to its surroundings, and for the 
reversional heredity, which goes back to the primitive types, to 
be firmly established, we can foresee the time when the number 
of half-breeds will be far larger than it is at present. 
• But what is their mental value? Do they stand much above 
the inferior race or much below the superior race ? 

Darwin notes in some half-breeds a return towards the habits of 
savage life ; but this, as it seems to us, may be only a mere phe- 
nomena of atavism. * Travellers speak of the degraded state and 
savage disposition of crossed races of man. That many excellent 
and kind-hearted mulattoes have existed no one will dispute; and 
a more mild and gentle set of men could hardly be found than the 
inhabitants of the island of Chiloe, who consist of Indians com- 
mingled with the Spaniards in various proportions. On the 
other hand, many years ago, long before I had thought of the 
present subject, I was struck with the fact that in South America 
men of complicated descent between Negroes, Indians, and 
Spaniards, seldom had, whatever the cause might be, a good 
expression. Livingstone, after speaking of a half-caste man, on 
the Zambesi, described by the Portuguese as a rare monster of 
inhumanity, remarks, "It is unaccountable why half-castes, such 
as he, are so much more cruel than the Portuguese ; but such is 
undoubtedly the case." An inhabitant remarked to Livingstone, 
" God made white men, and God made black men, but the devil 
made the half-castes." When two races, both low in the scale, are 
crossed, the progeny seems to be eminently bad. Thus the noble- 
hearted Humboldt, who felt none of that prejudice against the 
inferior races now so current in England, speaks in strong terms of 
the Zambos, or half-castes between Indians and Negroes ; and this 
conclusion has been arrived at by various observers. From these 
facts we may perhaps infer that the degraded state of so many 
half-castes is in part due to reversion to a primitive and savage 
condition, induced by the act of crossing, as well as to the 
unfavourable moral conditions under which they generally exist.' x 



1 Variation, etc., ii. p. 46. 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 299* 

There are other half-breeds, however, who are at least equal in 
point of intellect to their parents of the superior race. In 1789, 
nine English sailors mutinied, deserted their captain, and settled 
on Pitcairn Island with six Tahitans and fifteen Polynesian women. 
A quarrel soon arose among them. Five of the white men were 
killed, and the women murdered the Tahitans. The four white men: 
and the ten surviving women lived in a complete state of polygamy. . 
Strife broke out afresh between the four Europeans. Two were 
killed, and the remaining two resolved to live in peace, and to 
regenerate this little community, born amid an outburst of every 
wild passion. Captain Beechy visited the island in 1825; he found 
there a population of sixty-six individuals, remarkable for their fine 
proportions, their strength, their agility, their quick and ready in- 
telligence, their great desire for instruction and for moral qualities, 
of which he gives a touching example. This community, con- 
sisting entirely of half-breeds, was superior at least to the vast 
majority of the elements which had given birth to it. 

In Brazil, where, as the prejudices of colour are less strong than 
elsewhere, half-breeds may aspire to position in society, they have 
shown a decided artistic superiority over the two original races. 
' Nearly every painter and musician in Brazil is a half-breed. 
They possess, also, a turn for science, and many of them have 
become medical practitioners of high distinction.' 

In Venezuela, says M. de Quatrefages, mulattoes have been dis- 
tinguished as orators, publicists, and poets. One of them, formerly 
Vice-President of New Grenada, was a prominent writer and a 
good administrative officer. 

Authors who are by no means favourable to half-breeds admit 
that, particularly in America, they possess considerable intelligence, - 
wit, and imagination. 

We can draw no decisive conclusion from these facts, to which 
we might easily add many others ; not so much because the 
opinions are mutually contradictoiy, as because they are vague. 
Anthropologists, who usually are so minute and exact in their 
physiological distinctions, so soon as they come to consider mental 
characters, the complexity of which is so great, confine themselves. 
to general phrases, which are almost always the same. Some 
naturalists, however, have supposed that from all these facts of 



3oo Heredity. 



cross-breeding we might deduce a law which would give the 
answer to the question proposed in the present chapter. It may 
be thus stated : — 

The mixture of two unequal races tends to efface the less per- 
fect of the two. When a white man marries a negress, their child 
is a mulatto. When two mulattoes of equal blood intermarry, their 
child is whiter than themselves. This fact is an application of 
-a general law of nature, in accordance with which mixed forms 
have a tendency to return to the types from which they are sprung, 
and in the struggle for life the more perfect type prevails. 1 

Cases of unilateral crossing give some curious results. When 
the white is united to the black, and then with the half-bred 
progeny, the white type is seen to predominate more and more in 
every generation. The pure type reappears in the fifth generation. 
When this unilateral crossing takes place with the pure negro on 
the one side, and successive generations of mulattoes on the other, 
less time is required to bring back the perfect negro type. It 
reappears in the third generation. 

In a large part of South America (Brazil, the Argentine Repub- 
lic, Paraguay, etc.) a fact of great importance is found occurring 
with considerable uniformity. From numerous and trustworthy 
testimonies it appears that t in that vast region, where these two 
races are crossed in so large a scale, the European type always 
prevails in the long run. In Brazil, men of " mixed blood," of all 
degrees of hybridization, are numerous, forming a new population, 
which is ever growing more indigenous and coming nearer to the 
white type, and, judging from what is taking place all over South 
America, they will finally absorb all the other elements of the 
population.' M. de Quatrefages is not clear whether this fact is 
to be taken as a proof of the ascendancy of race. He is rather 
inclined to suppose that it is due to conscious selection in cross- 
breeding, the process being as a general rule unilateral, and in 
favour of the white race. However this may be, 'it is a result of 
great importance, for in this struggle between races, the victory 



1 Except where it is impeded by the action of its surroundings, as appears to 
*be the case in Peru, where the half-breed population has a strong tendency to 
return to the indigenous type. 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 301 

will at last be with that race which possesses the superior 
elements.' - 

Should the future verify these prognostics, should the white race 7 
after eliminating the two others, restore the cross races to its own 
type, it will have performed, in its own way, a work of regeneration; 
then the question with which we began will be definitely settled, 
and the mean level of humanity will have been greatly raised, still 
more perhaps by hereditary transmission than by the external 
action of education and custom. 

in. 

As we have seen, evolution in living beings, though it generally 
implies amelioration, progress, transition from worse to better, 
still, in its scientific sense, implies only the transition from simple 
to complex, from homogeneous to heterogeneous ; and hence, 
instead of progress, it sometimes leads only to diminution of force 
and to decay. We have now to consider heredity under this 
latter aspect, as related to the law of evolution. 

Everything that has life also declines and becomes extinct. It 
it doubtless because of this too evident truth that the belief in the 
law of progress appeared so late in man's history. First the indi- 
vidual disappears, then the family, then the nation ; and just as 
the individual makes use of many bodies before he finally becomes 
extinct, so, too, the family makes use of many individuals, the 
nation many families, the human race many nations. Perhaps 
humanity itself must disappear at last, made use of by some 
mightier force. It may be that in the evolution of the universe 
humanity is but one term in an endless series, one link in an 
endless chain. 

If we glance at any family that has acted a part in history, we 
see the following facts. Its origin is so obscure that usually we 
have to imagine or invent it ; it comes into prominence, grows, 
and attains its climax in one, two, or three generations at most ; it 
then declines and becomes extinct. Take the second $ace of 
Frank kings. It starts with Saint Arnoul, Bishop of Metz, follows 
an ascending series, Pepin d'Heristal, Charles Martel, Pepin the 

1 Quatrefages, loc. cit. p. 457. 



302 Heredity. 



Short, Charlemagne ; in the latter it attains its most perfect develop- 
ment, and then it declines. The third race starts with Robert the 
Strong, Count of France, reaches its climax in Philip Augustus, 
St. Louis, and Philip the Fair, and then it becomes extinct in 
three obscure kings. It is much the same with the Valois branch, 
sprung from Charles de Valois, son of Philippe le Hardi, and 
with the Angouleme branch, sprang from Louis d'Orle'ans, son of 
•Charles V., which ended with the feeble sons of Catherine de 
Me'dicis. Then come the Bourbons, whose climax is indicated 
by Henri IV. and Louis XIV, and who ever since have been on 
the decline. So, too, with the Guises, Conde's, etc. Nor are those 
families exempt from this law who have acted a great part, only on 
a small stage, in their own province or their own city. Indeed, it 
would not perhaps be inexact to say, with Dr. Lucas, that 'the 
ascending movement of the exalted faculties of most founders of 
families is nearly always arrested at the third generation, seldom 
goes on to the fourth, and hardly ever transcends the fifth.' So it 
is, too, with nations. Their origin is obscure ; they grow, attain the 
full measure of their power, and then their fate brings them to 
that period where they belong only to history ; and their decadence 
is due, not so much to those vague causes to which it is commonly 
attributed by historians, as to a definite cause: the decay of the 
faculties, physical, intellectual, and moral (and of the organic 
functions which are their condition), if not in all the citizens, at 
least in the majority of them. 

Heredity plays its part in this decline. Though by itself, as we 
have seen, it can do nothing, being merely a conservative tendency, 
still it is heredity alone that makes progress possible during the 
ascendant epoch of evolution. But then, on the other hand, after 
evolution has entered on its downward period, heredity confirms 
and regulates the decline. One by one it laid — fatefully, blindly 
— the courses of the edifice, and one after another it removes them 
with the same blin4 fatality. 

Thejinfluence of heredity is either direct or indirect. 

Its direct influence is exerted through the state of marriage. It 
is not a rare occurrence for a man of note to marry a woman of 
indifferent capacity, out of family or social considerations, or from 
chance or caprice. It has been observed that great men often 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 303 

leave descendants unworthy of them ; in fact, advantage has been 
taken of this fact in order to call in question hereditary transmis- 
sion, whereas we should rather perhaps find in it a striking con- 
firmation of the law. Galton, in his work on English judges, 1 
observes that of thirty-one judges raised to the peerage previous to 
the close of the reign of George IV., nineteen are still represented 
in the peerage by their descendants, and twelve peerages are 
extinct. Having minutely investigated the cause of this extinction, 
he discovered them in social reasons, in motives of convenience 
which led to ill-assorted unions : those peers whose families soon 
disappeared ' married heiresses.' Even when unequal matches do 
not produce such grave results as these, it is not to be doubted 
that, in virtue of the laws of heredity, they must cause a degenera- 
tion, which, being again and again repeated, must of necessity 
bring about the extinction of a gifted family, or, what is worse, its 
mediocrity. It is evident that a son may take after his indifferently 
gifted mother as readily as after his illustrious father, and that, as 
in any case he must be the resultant of the two, the chance of his 
being inferior to his father is as two to one. 

Considered as an indirect cause of decline, heredity acts by way 
of accumulation. Every family, every people, every race brings 
into the world at their birth a certain amount of vitality, and of 
physical and moral aptitudes, which in course of time will become 
manifest. This evolution has for its causes the continual action 
and reaction between the being and its surroundings. It goes on 
until the family, people, or race has fulfilled its destiny, brilliant 
for some, distinguished for others, obscure for the majority. When 
this sum of vitality and of aptitudes begins to fail, decay commences. 
This process of decay may at first be of no moment, but heredity 
transmits it to the next generation, from that to the following one, 
and so on till the period of utter extinction, if no external cause 
interferes to stay the decay. Here, then, heredity is only an 
indirect cause of degeneration, the direct cause being the action 
of the environment, by which term we understand all action from 
without — not only climate and mode of life, but also manners, 

1 Pages 130-132. See the concluding chapter of the work, with regard to 
the question whether great men leave no posterity. 



304 Heredity. 



customs, religious ideas, institutions, and laws, which often are 
very influential in determining the degeneration of a race. In the 
east, the harem, with its life of absolute ignorance and complete 
indolence, has, through physical and moral heredity, led to the 
rapid decay of various nations. ' We have no harem in France/ 
says a naturalist, ' but there are other causes, quite different in 
their origin, which tend ultimately to lower the race. In our day, 
paternal affection, with the assistance of medical science, more 
certain, and possessed of more resources, makes more and more 
certain the future of children, by saving the lives of countless weak, 
deformed, or otherwise ill-constituted creatures that would surely 
have died in a savage race, or in our own a century or two ago. 
These children become men, they marry, and by heredity transmit 
to their descendants at least a predisposition to imperfections 
like their own. Sometimes both husband and wife bring each a 
share to this heritage. The descendants go on degenerating, and 
the result for the community is debasement, and, finally, the disap- 
pearance of certain groups.' 1 

The only way of getting a clear idea of a case of psychological 
and moral decay, hereditarily transmitted, is by finding for it some 
organic cause. The physiology and anatomy of the brain are not 
yet sufficiently advanced to explain it ; we cannot say to what 
change in the brain such and such a decay of intellect, or such and 
such a perversion of the will, is to be attributed. But cerebral 
phenomena and psychical phenomena are so closely connected 
that a variation of the one implies a variation of the other. 

This being assumed, let us take a man of average organization, 
physically and morally. Let us suppose that, in consequence of 
disease, outward circumstances, influences coming from his sur- 
roundings or from his own will, his mind is impaired, to only a 
trifling extent it may be, but yet permanently. Clearly heredity 
has nothing to do with this decay ; but then, if it is transmitted to 
the next generation, and if, further, the same causes go on acting in 
the same direction, it is equally clear that heredity in. turn becomes 
a cause of decay. And if this slow action goes on with each new 
generation it may end in total extinction of intellect. 

1 Revue des Cows Scieniifiques> vol. vi. p. 690. 



Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 305 

These remarks also apply in every respect to nations and 
races : all that is required is that the destructive influences should 
bear, not on an isolated individual, but upon a mass of individuals. 
The mechanism of decay is identical in the two cases ; and we are 
justified in the conclusion that the causes which, in the narrow 
world of the individual and the family, produce a considerable 
diminution of the intellectual forces, must produce the like effect 
in that agglomeration of individuals which constitutes a society. 

Historians usually explain the decline of nations by their manners, 
institutions, and character, and in a certain sense the explanation 
is correct. These reasons, however, are rather vague, and, as we see, 
there exists a more profound, an ultimate cause — an organic cause, 
which can act only through heredity, but which is altogether over- 
looked. These organic causes will probably be ignored for some 
time to come, but our ignoring them will not do away with them. 
As for ourselves, who have, for purposes of our own, attempted to 
study the decay of the Lower Empire — the most amazing instance 
of decay presented by history — tracing step by step this degeneration 
through a thousand years : seeing, in their works of art, the plastic 
talent of the Greeks fade away by degrees, and result in the stiff 
drawing, and in the feeble, motionless figures of the Paleologi ; 
seeing the imagination of the Greeks wither up and become 
reduced to a few platitudes of description • seeing their lively wit 
change to empty babbling and senile dotage ; seeing all the 
characters of mind so disappear that the great men of their latter 
period would elsewhere pass only for mediocrities — it appears to 
us that beneath these visible, palpable facts — the only facts on which 
historians dwell — we discern the slow, blind, unconscious working 
of nature in the millions of human beings who were decayed, 
though they knew it not, and who transmitted to their descendants 
a germ of death, each generation adding to it somewhat of its own. 

Thus, in every people, whether it be rising or falling, there exists 
always, as the groundwork of every change, a secret working of 
the mind, and consequently of a part of the organism, and this 
of necessity comes under the law of heredity. 

Here we bring to a close our general study on the consequences 
of heredity. We must next look at the details. In order to pro- 
ceed with the inquiry methodically, we will proceed from causes 



306 Heredity. 



to effects, that is to say, from sentiments and ideas to acts, and 
from acts to social institutions. We will therefore study the influ- 
ence of heredity, first on the constitution of the human soul, on 
its intellectual states, its sentiments and passions, then on the 
acts which give outward expression to these inner states ; lastly, on 
the institutions which result from these acts, and which not only 
regulate, but also consolidate them. Thus we shall have to con- 
sider, successively, the psychological, the moral, and the social 
consequences of heredity. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF HEREDITY. 



The study of the psychological consequences of heredity must 
begin with the instincts. We will not here discuss a question 
already treated, 1 since it will be enough to state briefly the certain 
or probable results already obtained. 

If heredity acted merely the part of a conservator, its conse- 
quences, psychological or otherwise, would present no difficulty 
whatever. On the hypothesis of individual types created once for 
aHVith their physical and moral attributes, the only consequence 
of heredity would be the indefinite repetition of these types, with 
some accidental deviations — unimportant facts of spontaneity. 
But the case is very different. Notwithstanding the character of 
immutability usually assigned to instincts, they may vary as we 
have seen, and their variations are transmissible. Hence the first 
consequence of heredity, that it renders possible the acquisition of 
new instincts. This consequence rests on facts, and is certain and 
indisputable. 

Another consequence, one that is merely possible, and which 
weliave stated only as an hypothesis, is'the genesis of all instinct 
whatever by way of heredity. Instincts, regarded as hereditary 

1 See Part I. ch. i. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 307 

habits, would be the result of the accumulation of psychical acts 
which, originally very simple, have, in virtue of the law of evo- 
lution, passed from the simple to the complex, from the homo- 
geneous to the heterogeneous, thus giving rise to those highly 
complex acts which seem to us so wonderful. 

Hitherto we have restricted ourselves to looking simply at the 
bearings of this doctrine ; we are now to meet with it under 
another form, and we shall study its bearings here also. 

11. 

The same question, in fact, arises with regard to the intellect. 
Here some assign to heredity only a secondary influence, asserting 
that it allows the transmission and accumulation of certain charac- 
ters, and makes the development of the intellect possible, in the 
individual and in the species. 

Others go much farther, and attribute to heredity an actual 
creative power. According to them, the genesis of the constituent 
forms of intellect and of the laws and conditions of thought is the 
work of heredity. 

We will first examine this latter doctrine, the most radical, the 
most recent, the least known out of England. There it has been 
held by a few contemporary philosophers, and has given an 
entirely new shape to the famous problem of the origin of ideas. 
If this doctrine be true, it gives so important a part to heredity 
that we must here discuss it fully. 

It is one of the great merits of the school*of sensationalists that it 
early perceived the importance of questions of genesis. Through 
all its researches into the origin of our cognitions it was really 
concerned with the embryology of mind. It does not, however, 
appear to have been at first clearly conscious of this, or it would be 
impossible to explain the conception of a statue by Condillac 
and Bonnet — an actual adult individual, whose genesis could 
not but be illusory and artificial. This is as though the physio- 
logist were to take man at his birth, without concerning himself 
about the embryonic period which preceded it. It is singular 
to see how superficial, external, and imperfect are the processes 
of Condillac, and with what simplicity he thinks the most in- 
volved and complex phenomena may be explained and produced. 



308 Heredity. 



Condillac's system, however, has been excellently criticized already, 
and that by his own school. 1 But whatever its defects, we have 
reason to be thankful that it took the wrong course, as it led 
to finding the correct one, by suggesting the necessity of an em- 
bryology of mind. 

In Condillac's day, the various hypotheses of naturalists with 
regard to the fact of generation might be reduced to two chief 
hypotheses, one holding the pre-existence of germs, and the other 
epigenesis. 

The doctrine of the pre-existence of germs was the older, and, in 
some sense, the orthodox hypothesis. Vallisnieri, Bonnet, and 
Spallanzani maintained it in the seventeenth century; Haller also 
held it. It asserted that the ovum contains the animal or the man 
already formed, though of infinite minuteness, that all beings, each 
with its proper structure, have been contained in ova from mother 
to mother ever since the moment of creation \ that the act of 
generation merely gives them life and makes them capable of 
growth and development. 'They are/ says Maupertuis, in his 
Venus Physique, ' only little statues, enclosed one within another, 
like those works of the lathe in which the carver shows his skill 
with the chisel by making a hundred boxes shut up one within 
another.' 

The doctrine of epigenesis, on the other hand, then represented 
by Buffon and Wolff, held that the being is formed in all its parts 
in the act of generation. The embryologists of the nineteenth 
century have shown that originally the germs of all organisms are 

1 Cabanis, p. 521, Peissis Edition. It is interesting to compare Condillac's 
rude embryology with that of the great psychologists of the present time. It 
is given in its completest form by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his Principles of 
Psychology. The analysis begins with the most complex cognitions, and by 
successive decompositions arrives at the simplest act of thinking — viz. the per- 
ception of a difference. The synthesis, a very different affair from Condillac's 
artificial process, starts from reflex action, passing through instinct and memory, 
and arrives at the operations of reason, sentiment, and will. The author thus 
ascends from the conditions of a psychic state to the state itself, from the lower 
to the higher, from vague and general modes of mental activity to those that are 
precise and more and more determinate, from the simple to the complex. The 
comparison between the two methods is instructive ; it just marks the difference 
between a truly scientific method and a purely verbal process. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 309 



structureless and alike, and that the development of each germ 
consists in acquiring the structure peculiar to its species. Some 
of them, even, such as Menckel and Serres, discovered in the 
temporary and transient forms of the embryogeny of man and the 
other vertebrates the arrested and permanent forms of invertebrate 
organisms. At least this much is certain, that at a certain point 
of their development the embryos of all vertebrates, whether birds 
or fishes, reptile or man, present only the most general and the 
simplest features of the vertebrate type. Nothing could differ 
more widely than this from the hypothesis of ' little statues ' fully 
formed. 

In our opinion, if we look at the theories on the origin of our 
cognitions, that is, the embryogeny of mind, in the light of these 
two hypotheses as to the embryogeny of the body, the philosophic 
question assumes a new aspect. 

The spiritualistic or rationalistic school holds, after its own 
fashion, the pre-existence of germs. Whether, with Descartes, we 
accept innate ideas, or, with Leibnitz, hold that arithmetic and 
geometry exist in us virtually, and that there are graven on the 
soul truths which it has never known, is to hold that the soul, so long 
as it has existed, has possessed all its constituent elements. 
Experience perfects and completes it, but gives to it very little 
indeed, compared with what it receives. Just as, in the hypothesis 
of the pre-existence of germs, the minute being is developed, but 
does not undergo any change in its essential parts, or in the rela- 
tions between them, merely attaining greater size, filling up gaps 
and acquiring a few accessory organs ; so in the spiritualistic 
hypothesis, experience merely causes us to adapt ourselves to the 
fundamental forms and laws of the human soul, to those ideas and 
judgments which constitute it, so to speak, and which are to the 
mind what the cerebro-spinal axis is to the body. This analogy 
will appear still more evident when we remember that Leibnitz 
compares the human soul, previous to experience, to a statue out- 
lined by the veinings in a rough block of marble. 

As for epigenesis, its counterpart in philosophy is not, we take 
it, ordinary sensationalism, but a new system which we are about 
to describe in the words of Spencer, Lewes, and Murphy, and 
which lays much stress on heredity. 



3io Heredity. 



These philosophers have, in the first place, made an excellent, 
radical, and decisive criticism of the old empiricism. ' To accept,' 
says Spencer, ' the untenable assertion that prior to experience the 
mind is a blank is to overlook the very root of the question, viz. 
Whence comes the faculty of organizing sensations ? ... If at 
birth there exists nothing but a purely passive receptivity of im- 
pressions, why could not a horse receive the same education as a 
man? . . . Why should not the cat and the dog, subjected as they 
are to the same experiences obtained in domestic life, attain to the 
same degree and the same kind of intelligence ? Under its current 
form, the experience hypothesis implies that the presence of a 
nervous system organized in a certain way is an unimportant cir- 
cumstance, a fact that need not be taken into account, yet it is the 
most important fact of all.'* 

Cognition is necessarily the product of two factors : first, we 
have what is presented to the mind, the internal or external phe- 
nomena, form, colour, agreeable or disagreeable sensations, etc. ; 
and then we have what the mind itself offers — the laws of thought, 
which connect the phenomena, and reduce to order this indis- 
ciplined and confused mass. This was clearly seen and well shown 
by Kant. But the philosophers of whom we speak, while they 
admire him, reproach him with having regarded the laws of thought 
as ultimate, irreducible, and inexplicable facts, instead of investi- 
gating their genesis. ' Kant and his disciples,' says Mr. Lewes, 
' taking up the adult human mind, considered its constituent forms 
as initial conditions .' ' These forms,' say they, ' are implied in each 
individual experience.' Certainly, for if they were not so implied 
they never could be got out of them. This explanation is logically 
perfect, but it is of no service for psychology, which has to resolve 
a question of origin. Reasoning d priori, we might say that the 
vertebrate type is the necessary form which makes the vertebrate 
possible. This will do in anatomy, but it is false in morphology, 
which shows that the typical form results from the successive 
phases of the animal's development. Kant anatomized cognition 
well enough, but he disregarded its morphology. 

What, then, are these mysterious forms of thought ? Like the 



Psychology ', 2nd ed., § 208. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 311 

forms of life, they are evolutions, not preformations. While they 
are the laws of experience, they are at the same time its results — 
results of the experience of the race, and not of the individual ; 
they are the product of heredity. Let us get a clear idea of this 
doctrine. 

I hear a bell ring. This fact, apparently so simple, is neverthe- 
less highly complex ; it consists of a group of sensations, induc- 
tions, and sense-images, each one of which is in itself a group. 
Not to speak of the primitive elements, which is not here neces- 
sary, and noting only the simple, rough, well-known facts, the sum 
of which makes up for us the phenomenon, we can tell the quality 
of the sound of a bell which is rung \ whether the bell is large, 
small, or medium sized ; whether it is near or distant, whether it is 
sounded by a hammer or by a clapper, whether it is in this church 
or in that, etc. ; finally, whether the sound continues for a long 
time or not. This last fact, the co7itinnance of the sensation, I take to 
be one of the elements of the group, — in fact, an essential and funda- 
mental element, and, so to speak, the ground on which all the others 
are projected. Again, suppose I have a tooth drawn. This fact 
also consists of a group of sensations, sentiments, and ideas, far 
more complex than the preceding • and here, too, we find that 
duration is an essential element. Take any fact, any experience 
whatever, and you will always find groups of sensations, and 
among the elements of each group you will find duration, or time 
— that is to say, duration in its abstract and universal form, con- 
sidered objectively. 

I open my eyes, and see before me a fresh sown field. This 
fact, too, is a group of sensations and ideas (colour, form, distance, 
etc.), and in this group there is one attribute which, in like manner, 
is regarded as essential — viz. that continuity which, uniting together 
all the countless points of the field, makes of them one extended 
whole. This quality of extension I find coupled with other 
variable qualities, in an immense number of objects which I call 
material. Hence I regard extension or space, i.e. abstract, simple, 
possible extension, as a permanent attribute of all bodies. 

I approach the fire, and it warms me ; I smell an alkali, and it 
catches my breath ; I see a cannon ball fired, and it knocks down 
the wall it strikes. In these, and countless other cases like them 



312 Heredity. 



the first fact is always followed by the second. The phenomenon, 
taken in its totality, is presented to us as something made up of 
two groups, so arranged that the first always necessitates the 
second; in other words, in the sum of qualities and relations 
which make up this inseparable pair we find, as an essential 
element, the relation of constant succession between the first and 
the second — the property that the first is always followed by the 
second. This fundamental property, which is also found in many 
other pairs, is denominated causality. 

The foregoing analyses are not borrowed from the English 
philosophers, but we think they exactly represent their views. 
Now, if with them we hold that the mind is formed as well by the 
action of external objects upon it as by its reaction on external 
objects ; if we hold that accidental, variable, changeable attributes 
must produce in the organism, and hence on the mind, accidental, 
variable, changeable modifications, but that fixed and essential 
attributes must have permanent modifications answering to them ; 
if we observe that the attribute of duration being found in all the 
groups, that of extension in nearly all, and the relation of causality 
in a very large number of couples, they must recur millions of 
times during the life of each, and so, by repetition, tend to become 
organic ; if, finally, we observe that these modifications are here- 
ditarily transmitted to a new individual, who in turn experiences the 
same fixed and permanent impressions, and by him to another and 
another without limit, we shall then be able to understand the part 
played by heredity in the genesis of the forms of thought, and to 
see how heredity may produce, in the second or third generation? 
a mental habitude so deeply rooted as to be rightly called innate, 
provided it be borne in mind how it has come to be so. 

' We have seen/ says Herbert Spencer, 1 ' that the establishment 
of those compound relief actions, called instincts, is compre- 
hensible on the principle that inner relations are, by perpetual 
repetition, organized into correspondence with outer relations. We 
have now to observe that the establishment of those consolidated, 
those indissoluble, those instinctive mental relations constituting 
our ideas of space and time, is comprehensible on the same 



Psychology, 2nd ed., § 208. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 313 

principle. For if even to external relations that are often ex- 
perienced during the life of a single organism, answering internal 
relations are established that become next to automatic — if such 
a combination of psychical changes as that which guides a savage 
in hitting a bird with an arrow becomes, by constant repetition, so 
organized as to be performed almost without thought of the pro- 
cess of adjustment gone through ; and if skill of this kind is so 
far transmissible that particular races of men become characterized 
by particular aptitudes, which are nothing else than partially or- 
ganized psychical connections — then, if there exist certain external 
relations which are experienced by all organisms, at all instants of 
their waking lives — relations which are absolutely constant — there 
will be established answering internal relations that are absolutely 
constant, absolutely universal. Such relations we have in those of 
space and time. ... As the substrata of all other relations in 
the non-Ego, they must be responded to by conceptions that are 
the substrata of all other relations in the Ego. Being the constant 
and infinitely repeated elements of thought, they must become the 
automatic elements of thought — the elements of thought which it 
is impossible to get rid of — the ' forms of intuition.' 

From this brief statement of the question it is easy to see that 
it is one of the highest in all philosophy, as being concerned with 
the genesis of thought itself. Here Ave arrive at a first cause : we 
leave facts and enter on metaphysics. 

Thought is, in fact, one of the forms of the unknowable — indeed, 
the most mysterious of them all. A little reflection suffices to 
show this. It is certain that the exterior world, the object, is 
knowable only in so far as it is reducible to thought; that it has 
no existence for us, save on that same condition ; that in it we 
see only a sum of phenomena governed by laws ; and as the 
phenomena are resolved into perceptions, and the laws into ratio- 
cinations, therefore the whole universe may be resolved into 
psychological states. To say, with the idealists, that thought is 
the measure of all things, so that the limits of our thought are 
also the limits of reality, is certainly a gratuitous hypothesis ; for 
we cannot be certain that beyond all actual or possible cognition 
of ours there are not actual existences for ever unknowable, and 
we have no warrant for making human thought the absolute 



314 Heredity. 



thought. But when we say, in a purely relative sense, that our 
thought is for us the measure of being, we enunciate an un- 
questionable truth, almost a truism ; and from this purely human 
point of view we may affirm that the world has no existence for 
us, except in so far as it is thinkable. The world is a system of 
unknown qualities which we explain with the assistance of another 
unknown quality, thought ; the latter, however, still remains the x 
of an unsolvable equation. 

If, then, we see that thought is both an ultimate cause in meta- 
physics and an ultimate principle in logic, we must not be surprised 
at finding it impossible to answer that apparently simple question, 
What is thought ? We are utterly unable to go beyond external 
and superficial explanations, and to get at the essence of thought. 

Under its phenomenal form, thought is a simplification. To 
think is to simplify, to reduce plurality to unity. All the objects 
of our states of consciousness must be either concrete or abstract, 
and we cannot get at either of these but by a process of simpli- 
fication. In the first place, those objects which we call concrete — 
a house, a man, a star — are extended, and yet can enter into our 
thought only under the form of a simple series, only under the 
condition of time. We know not how an act which has no ex- 
tension can represent an extended object — how time can for us 
take the place of space. But it is certain that concrete objects 
are knowable for us only on this condition, and that to refer space 
to time is to refer the complex to the simple — to simplify. 

To obtain our abstract cognitions we must abstract, generalize, 
induce and deduce, and all these operations in the last analysis 
amount to classification according to resemblances and differences, 
or to simplification. Thought, therefore, is the unifying principle 
which reduces to order the chaos of the universe. To think is 
to unify. 

But this unification is but the process, the mechanism of thought 
When we speak of our cognition of thought, we mean only the 
forms of thought. We cannot go beyond this, nor can we know 
how, by means of our consciousness, there is formed in our minds 
a world answering to, though not resembling, all that is without 
us. All discussion, therefore, with regard to the nature of 
thought, is concerned only with its forms ; and when we assert 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 3 1 5 



that these forms are the result of heredity, we assert that thought 
itself, as a phenomenon, is a result of heredity. 

As we have seen, the associationist school, while agreeing with 
Kant as to the necessity of certain forms (time, space, causality) 
in order to connect experience and to constitute thought, differs 
from that philosopher by holding these forms to be the result of an 
evolution. The difference is more radical than would at first 
sight appear, for in Kant's hypothesis it is the forms of the subject 
that give shape to the object, while in the other hypothesis the 
object gives shape to the subject : in the view of the one the 
universe is dependent on thought, in that of the other thought is 
dependent on the universe. We would observe, by the way, that 
the criticism made in France on the association psychology is 
not well founded. The law of the association of ideas, it is said, 
having been discovered first, the only originality of this system of 
psychology is that it has generalized that law, and endeavoured 
to bring under it all the operations of thought. But this is a mis- 
conception in regard to the true originality of this school, which 
is very different. To assert, as this school does, that the cause of 
our internal nexus exists in nexus which is external • that when two 
phenomena are rarely associated in the object they are also rarely 
associated in the subject, and that when they are always associated 
in the object they are always associated in the subject, is to assert, 
in opposition to Kant, that the laws of cognition depend abso- 
lutely on the laws of nature, to import mechanism into the intel- 
lect, and to subject the intellect itself to mechanism as the 
ultimate law governing its phenomenal development. 

Moreover, the hypothesis of a genesis of the ' forms of thought ' 
by continuous evolution is not characteristic of the whole asso- 
ciationist school, but only of those adherents of it who accept 
universal evolution. We regard it as a simple hypothesis, and 
only desire to show that it is not so inadmissible as it may at first 
appear. 

Starting from the hypothesis of a primordial nebula, we see that 
the universe must have endured thousands and thousands of years, 
during which nothing existed but physical and chemical pheno- 
mena. We cannot tell when or how, or by what series of blind 
attempts and essays life could be produced. Neither do we know 



3 1 6 Heredity. 



how the transition was brought about from the physiological to 
the psychological epoch — from the period of no thought to the 
period of thought. The development school, however, is bound 
to maintain this ascending evolution. This was perceived even 
by Lamarck, and he boldly supposes the existence of a primitive 
race of non-sentient animals. ' In producing life/ says he, ' nature 
did not abruptly set up so high a faculty as that of sense. Nature 
did not possess the means of creating this faculty in the imperfect 
animals belonging to the earliest classes of the animal kingdom. 51 
When we consider from the biological point of view the pheno- 
mena of mental activity, and compare them with purely vital 
facts, we find that both possess in common this essential point, 
that they are a correspondence. Herbert Spencer has shown how 
physiological life consists of a correspondence between a being 
and its environment, 2 and how in the sum of actions and reactions 
which constitute life there is a continual adjustment of internal to 
external relations, so that the degree of life varies as the degree of 
correspondence, perfect life being perfect correspondence. But 
mental life is, like bodily life, a correspondence. To think, or to 
have a cognition, is to have in our mind a certain state corres- 
ponding to a certain state without ; and this correspondence also 
is found in all possible degrees, from the zoophyte to man, so that 
the degree of cognition is measured by the degree of correspond- 
ence. Between life and thought, therefore, there are other 
differences than that between a partial and a total correspondence, 
between a correspondence imperfectly unified (life) and a corres- 
pondence perfectly unified (consciousness); finally, and here is the 
mystery, between an unconscious and a conscious correspondence. 
If we could know how the simultaneous becomes successive, and 
how plurality becomes unity, then we could tell how thought 
results from life. 3 They suppose that they have explained this 

1 Philosophic Zoologique, Discours Preliminaire, 7. 

2 Principles of Biology. For instance, there must be in a plant certain 
changes answering to the changes of its environment (humidity, dryness, etc. ). 

3 An author who holds the genesis of the forms of thought through evolution 
has developed the singular hypothesis that it is possible to ' think in space. ' 
(Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, ch. xxxvii.) For this, says he, it would suffice 
that a mind, in place of thinking as our mind does, with words succeeding one 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 317 

metamorphosis by heredity. Though we do not mean to give 
any advantage to this theory, still we must observe that thought 
is impossible except with the aid of certain forms to serve as 
schemata • that if these forms are annexed to a certain state of the 
brain, as is probably the case, and if this state of the brain is itself 
the result of a gradual evolution, then the conclusion is all but 
inevitable that the forms of thought are the result of an evolution 
in the species. Gratiolet, whose immaterialism (spiriiiialisme) has 
never been called in question, used to say that to him ' it was 
evident that the ontological analysis of philosophers, and especially 
that prime distinction between the ideas of time and space, were 
inscribed in advance among the preordinations of the animal 
organism.' Admit evolution also, . and development has nearly 
gained its cause. 

On this hypothesis, thousands and thousands of years rolled 
away before thought could appear on earth. Neither animals un- 
provided with a nervous system (bryozoa), nor those whose ganglia 
are nearly independent of one another (asterias), nor those in which 
there is just a beginning of unity, could have arrived at conscious- 
ness : their physical life must be a confused state in which the 
subject is not distinguished from its object. It is only in the 
higher animals, and perhaps in man alone, that the brain, resulting 
from a gradual evolution, and shaped by countless actions and 
reactions which have been preserved and transmitted by heredity, 
could become the instrument of thought. 

Thus the doctrine of development rigorously applies to the 
world of thought the same hypothesis as to the world of life. On 
the one hand, it deduces all species from three or four primitive 
types, or it may be from only one. On the other hand, from a 
few very simple psychical acts, it may be from only one, it deduces 
the endless variety of instincts and intelligences of sentiments 
and passions. We have endeavoured to show how this hypothesis 



another in time, should think by means of figures traced in space. But even in 
that case we should have thinking in both time and space, and not in space 
alone. It is useless to dwell upon an hypothesis of which the verification is 
impossible, and which, farther, is in contradiction with the essential condition 
of thought, viz. unity. 



318 Heredity. 



is* to be understood, and on what grounds it rests ; for our own 
part, we neither accept nor reject it. 

If we are to accept it, it must be verifiable by experience, or 
demonstrable by logic. Experimental verification would consist 
in showing that it agrees with all the facts, and that it can be 
brought entirely under their control ; but it is impossible to 
show any such thing. Logical demonstration would consist in 
showing that this one hypothesis, exclusive of all others, 
explains the facts ; but this demonstration per absurdum is im- 
possible. 

If we are to reject it, the hypothesis must involve some logical 
contradiction ; but this is not the case. It is true that it is difficult 
to understand how no-thought can become thought, but without 
attempting to explain this, we may bear in mind that this transition 
is progressive, and that life and thought share in common this 
essential character, that they are a correspondence produced by a 
series of actions and reactions. Moreover, this evolutional genesis 
of the forms of thought, which the doctrine of development applies 
to the species, is admitted by all as applying to the individual. 
The individual cannot think (in the proper sense of the word) 
until his brain is developed ; and if thought, in its true sense, 
possessed of all its constituent forms, comes into being in an 
instant — which is doubtful — we do not see why this bright flash in 
the night of the unconscious should not have lighted up the species 
also, at some definite instant. To say that the objects of the con- 
stituent forms of thought — space, time, causality — could not have 
modified the brain, because they have no concrete existence in 
nature, as have a stone or a dog, is not to present a difficulty ; for 
if, with Leibnitz, we regard them as relations it is quite natural that 
the brain should be modified, not only by things, but by the rela- 
tions between things. 

These two opposite theories — the one regarding thought as the 
essential causality to which nature is a secondary causality, and 
the other regarding nature as the essential causality and thought 
as secondary — might perhaps be reconciled by admitting the 
identity of mechanism and logic, of intelligence in nature and 
intelligence in thought. We have already alluded to this doctrine, 
but this is not the place to set it forth. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 319 



in. 

We have now seen how, on certain hypotheses, heredity con- 
tributes towards the creation of intelligence. We now propose to 
turn aside from this radical solution, and to inquire how it contri- 
butes towards its development. We here use the word intelligence 
in a sense at once common and philosophic, as that faculty of 
judgment, ratiocination, and abstraction which in conduct is 
denominated prudence, good sense, tact, dexterity, penetration; 
in art, inventiveness, taste ; in science, the faculty for discovery, 
for generalization, and for detecting relations. Having already 
proved by sundry facts from normal and morbid psychology and 
from history the existence of intellectual heredity, we will take it 
for granted here as an empiric law, and we will investigate its 
consequences. 

If we consider heredity under purely ideal conditions, nothing 
can be simpler than to determine its consequences : it fixes and 
preserves the modes of intelligence as they appear. Thus some 
variety of the intelligence — humour, for instance — appears in an 
individual either by spontaneous variation, or by that chance 
concurrence of causes which has been called spontaneity : now 
if heredity alone were at work it would transmit this mental 
modification uninterruptedly to all the succeeding generations. 
But, as we have seen, it meets with hindrances of every descrip- 
tion, which tend to weaken or even to destroy it. Yet if, in- 
stead of considering isolated cases where heredity appears to be 
at fault, we consider a large number of cases ; if we invoke what 
has been called the law of numbers, the exception disappears, the 
accidental vanishes, and the law, or, in other words, the essential 
character, takes the chief place. Thus it is that heredity con- 
tributes to the formation of national character. A certain turn of 
mind may easily fail to be perpetuated in a family ; but if it is 
common to a tribe, a people, a race, it is safe to say that it must 
be perpetuated. We have seen how closely at bottom the French 
mind resembles the Gallic mind, as described by Strabo, Diodorus 
Siculus, and other ancient historians. Thus, in the formation and 
conservation of the special character of a family or of a nation, 
heredity is a very important factor. But not to dwell here on this 



Heredity. 



point, which is not so much a consequence of heredity as the law 
itself, under its most perfect form, we pass on to the consideration 
of another still more curious point, not so well known, and more 
difficult to prove, but which, from its bearing on intelligence, con- 
stitutes an important consequence of heredity. It may thus be 
stated under an ideal form, that is, without taking into account the 
exceptions : heredity, acting by way of accumulation, augments 
intelligence in successive generations, and thus makes it capable 
of fresh developments. 

This we will now endeavour to prove. 

We will first point out the physiological grounds of the fact 
under consideration. It is well known that every organ is 
developed by exercise : in the blacksmith the muscles of the 
arms ; in the pedestrian, those of the legs. The organ produces 
the function, but the function in turn reacts on the organ and 
develops it. We can scarcely doubt that this holds good with 
regard to the brain, that it grows by exercise, and that this aug- 
mentation is transmissible by heredity. Dr. Brocas, on the 
strength of various researches, says that the capacity of the skull, 
and consequently the volume of the brain, corresponds with the 
degree of intelligence of the different races : the largest are found 
in the white race, then in the Caucasian, next in the negroes of 
Africa — the Australian negro holds the last rank. Albert, of 
Bonn, says that having dissected the brains of several persons 
who had for years been accustomed to mental work, he found in 
all the cerebral substance very firm, and the grey matter and the 
convolutions highly developed. 6 The augmentation of the mass 
of the brain/ he says, ' is proved partly by the difference existing 
between cultured and uncultured people, and partly by the in- 
creased volume of brain which results from the progress of 
civilization in Europe ; an increase which accumulates, by reason 
of heredity, in a degree which admits of demonstration.' (Mit 
Hillfe der Vererbung sich so weit summzti, dass es conslatirt werden 
kann.) In fact, we find that among the educated classes the 
size of the head is usually large, and that the contrary is the 
case among the uneducated. Finally, there is a fact which directly 
concerns the question in hand : excavations made in cemeteries 
show that the size of skulls has increased since the Middle Ages. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 321 

Dr. Broca compared together one hundred and twenty-five 
skulls from the crypt of the old church of Saint-Barthelemi, in Paris 
(twelfth century), one hundred and twenty-five skulls from the 
Cimetiere des Innocents, used from the thirteenth to the eighteenth 
century, and one hundred and twenty-five skulls from the old 
Cimetiere de l'Ouest, open from 1788 till 1824. 

Here are the results of this comparison, so far as regards the 
mean capacity of the crania. 

Mean Capacity. 
Skulls of the twelfth century 84777 cubic inches 
,, Cim. des Innocents 83783 ,, ,, 
„ Nineteenth century 86*901 ,, ,, 

It will be seen that the mean capacity of the skulls belonging to 
the present century possesses a decided superiority. As regards 
the inferiority of the skulls from the Cimetiere des Innocents to 
those of the twelfth century, Dr. Broca explains it by observing 
that the crypts of the church of the 'Cite' were used by the 
upper classes ; while as for the crania from Les Innocents, it is 
beyond doubt that they belong to the lower classes, Philip 
Augustus having presented that plot of ground to the city of 
Paris as a burying place for the poor. 

Resting on these physiological data, Gall and his disciples, as 
also Auguste Comte, Pritchard, and others in more recent times, 
have held that the mental faculties are capable of augmentation, 
inasmuch as they are transmissible. The conclusion appears 
logical. Intelligence has for its condition, for its chief organ, the 
brain ; the brain grows by exercise, and this growth is transmissible 
by heredity. Hence it is perfectly fair to conclude that every 
modification, every improvement of an organ, imports a modifica- 
tion, an improvement in function, and that consequently the 
development of the brain implies development of the intelligence. 

But this important fact, that progress of the intelligence is 
possible, not only in the individual, but also in the race ; that 
heredity transmits and accumulates trifling modifications, we 
should wish to establish directly by psychological arguments, and 
not by resorting to physiology, as we have just done. It is a 
difficult task, and we can only attempt it. 

We will first try to understand upon what condition the progress 



322 Heredity. 



of intelligence takes place in the individual. It proceeds by a 
gradual evolution. The mind can at first grasp simple facts, then 
more complex ones, next simple relations, and then relations more 
and more complicated. Each stage of this progress has its con- 
dition in an anterior progress, which must have been realized 
previously, and which alone makes the following one possible. 
The intelligence may be compared to a building, in which each 
course of masonry must be laid securely in order to receive 
another. Or, if with certain contemporary philosophers we com- 
pare the act of cognition to a correspondence between the in- 
ternal states of the subject and the external states of the object, 
we may say that the mind must first correspond with very simple 
relations in order to rise to those which are highly complex. 

This difference, about which there is no question in theory, is 
forgotten in practice. Doubtless where there are problems strictly 
dependent on one another, as in mathematics, the mind cannot 
but follow the natural course ; but in the domain of the social and 
political sciences, nothing is more common than for people to begin 
at the end. Hence so many vain theories and erroneous doctrines, 
the mind being unable to understand what is complex, since it 
has not first grasped what is simple. For it is a mistake to 
suppose that it is sufficient to bring a gifted, intelligent mind face 
to face with such and such facts, and that it will understand them 
at once. A thousand instances prove the contrary. Let a person, 
intelligent, but of imperfect culture, read Grecian or Roman 
history, and we are surprised, amazed, at the misinterpretations 
he will make of it. The Middle Ages abounded in blunders of 
this sort whenever an attempt was made to describe a world 
different from that which then existed. See how the Trojan war, 
Caesar and Alexander are travestied in the poems of chivalry, or in 
the quaint pictures of the fifteenth century. 1 This is shown still 
better by an example from savage life. A native of New Zealand, 
intelligent and curious, connected with the chief families of his 
country, accompanied an English traveller to London for educa- 



1 For example, see at the Campana Museum the adventures of Theseus 
and Ariadne, with cavaliers, pages, churches, gothic houses, narrow streets, 
battlements, etc. 



The Psychological Conseqitences of Heredity. 32^ 



o 



tion, but owing to the imperfect development of his mind he could 
understand nothing of our European civilization, and interpreted 
everything according to the notions of a savage. Thus, when a 
rich man passed, he would say, 'That man has a good deal to eat,' 
unable to understand wealth in any other way. 

The mind must certainly be first moulded by previous culture 
in order to enter on complex questions, and this is true of the 
species no less than of the individual. In the individual all 
progress of the intellect becomes, when fixed by memory, the basis 
and the condition of further progress ; in the species all progress 
of the intelligence becomes, when fixed by heredity, the basis and 
the condition of further progress. Heredity plays, in regard to 
the species, nearly the same part that memory plays in regard to 
the individual. 

If in our literary history we make some unexpected comparison 
— as, for example, between men of letters of the fifth century and 
those of the eighteenth ; between Gregory of Tours and Tredega- 
rius, etc., and Voltaire, Diderot and the whole Encyclopedistes ; 
or between the court of Charlemagne and our romantic movement 
of the nineteenth century — the discord is so complete, the contrast 
so great, that the comparison seems to be simply whimsical. There 
is, between the intellectual forms of the two epochs compared, an 
immense difference, which it is usually said proceeds from progress 
and civilization. 

We are told, and it is proved to us, how the French mind 
reached its apogee after much groping and many efforts and 
failures. But this progress is explained altogether by external 
causes — the influence of Christian beliefs, the crusades, great dis- 
coveries, Greek and Latin culture, the Renaissance, etc. But 
there is also, it seems to us, an internal cause of which we hear 
nothing; the gradual transformation of the intelligence by heredity. 
The average French mind in the sixth and ninth centuries was 
capable only of a certain degree of culture ; beyond that it under- 
stood nothing, and distorted everything, after the manner of the New 
Zealand savage. But this average mental constitution, improved 
by culture, was bequeathed, principal and interest, to the next 
generation, and so on for ten or twelve centuries. 

This is no mere hypothesis, although it would be difficult to 



324 Heredity. 



establish it to demonstration. Yet, if we open the Collection des 
Historiens de Gaule et de France, and if, glancing at the chronicles 
and memoirs of the Middle Ages, we disregard the subjects which 
have specially engaged the minds of historians — accounts of battles, 
sieges, captures of hamlets, alliances and treaties of peace — and 
direct our attention to what they often regard as of no importance 
for history — that is to say, anecdotes, miracles, and dreams which 
give every minute and individual detail — we cannot fail to arrive 
at the conclusion that the state of the intellect was not then the 
same as to-day, and that the difference between the two epochs is 
constitutional, organic. It is, however, difficult to define in what 
the difference consists. It would require an acute mind, well 
acquainted with medical science, and possessed of good psycho- 
logical insight, to define it exactly. In general terms, it may be 
said that it consists in this, that the Middle Ages felt what the 
eighteenth century has thought ; that in the one the affections pre- 
dominated, in the other reason; that a brain in the Middle Ages 
was full of sensations and images, in the eighteenth century it 
was full of abstractions and ideas. 

Certainly in no period have men dwelt more in the region of 
imagination, sentiment, and dreams. This is abundantly shown 
in Gothic art, in chivalry, in the writings of Dante and of the 
various schools of mystics. 1 With the exception of a few extra- 
ordinary minds and a few dry school-men, that whole period lived 
altogether in sentiment. The circumstances of the times were 
favourable to this state of things — constant wars, battles, sieges 7 
pillage, violent emotions of every kind. The sentiment, con- 
tinually excited and quickened, became exaggerated like an hyper- 
trophied organ. Hence this curious result, that the excessive 
development of sensitiveness checked the development of the 
intelligence. In this feverish storm of emotions and impressions, 
cool, calm judgment appeared at a disadvantage. Then were the 
minds of children in the bodies of men. Whereas we find our- 
selves, from the period of infancy, in an atmosphere of science, 



1 E.g. the schools of St. Victor, St. Bernard, Gerson, etc., and the great 
German mystics of the 14th century, Eckardt, Tauler, and Henry Suso. We 
might mention also Raymond Lulle, whose life was so romantic and eccentric. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 325 

reason, method and rational explanations, whose special effect is 
to develop the mind • they, on the contrary, were the prey of wild 
passions, tossed from pole to pole of thought, from orgies to 
ecstasies, by some conversion sudden as a thunderclap. As 
they felt much and thought little, they knew nothing even in old 
age, whereas we even in childhood know much. They died 
young, we are born old. 

Hence it is that their chroniclers give those accounts of miracles, 
prodigies, apparitions and dreams which succeed each other with- 
out end or truce, sometimes touching and poetic, oftener extrava- 
gant and puerile. They are at home in this world of imagination; 
to them a prodigy appears perfectly simple, an apparition quite 
natural ; miracle is, for them, matter of course. These things 
they recount simply, and without the shadow of a doubt, as they 
do a siege or battle. The universe, which for us is an infinitely 
complex mechanism, ruled by fixed laws down to its minutest 
details, was for them a wondrous stage, whereon mysterious person- 
ages moved the scenes. If, now, we bring all these facts together, 
and endeavour to trace them to their cause — that is, to the habitual 
state of the human soul which produced them — we shall, without 
much difficulty, find that the chief characteristic of the Middle 
Ages was lively imagination, internal vision. But experimental 
psychology proves, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the 
difference between lively imagination and hallucination is only a 
difference of degree ; so that, indeed, every great artist, every seer, 
is more or less subject to hallucination. Hence we are led to 
conclude that the Middle Ages were ever on the border of halluci- 
nation, if they did not overstep it. In several of these chroniclers' 
stories we also meet with the oppression of nightmare, and with 
the painful visions accompanying it ; for generally the visions are 
painful, though usually so distinct, so full and minute in detail, 
that we feel that this has been seen} 

1 Marvellous stories abound in nearly all these chronicles, and we might men- 
tion in particular, Gregory of Tours, Frodoardus, Mathew of Westminster, 
Raoul Glaber, and Guibert de Nogent in his Life. The two latter authors are 
specially interesting from our present point of view. It would be impossible 
to find hallucination better characterized than in the two following narra- 
tives : — 



326 Heredity. 



We are now, after a long circuit, able to resolve our problem 
and to reach a conclusion. It may be remembered that we have 
already endeavoured to show that for every habitual mental state 
there is an habitual state of brain, and thence deduced the 
fact that for the mediaeval state of semi-hallucination there must 
have been a corresponding cerebral state, and another for the 
precise, accurate mind of the eighteenth century. This transition 
was effected by a slow progress — that is to say, that education and 
culture produced in the mind and brain trifling though stable 
modifications, which were handed down, preserved, and accumu- 
lated by heredity. Thus was formed an average intellectual con- 
stitution, more and more able to conceive abstract ideas, and 
consequently less and less able to perform mental operations by 
means of visions and impressions. 

It has often been observed that among the inferior races children 
who are sent to school, or whom an effort is made to instruct, at 
first show a surprising facility, but this suddenly ceases. Thus, 
the Sandwich Islanders have an excellent memory, learn by 

■ One night, before matins, I saw before me, at the foot of my bed, an ugly 
little monster in human form. He appeared to me to be of middle stature, 
with skinny neck, slender figure, deep-black eyes, narrow, wrinkled fore- 
head, flat nose, wide mouth, swollen lips, short, weak chin, goat's beard, 
narrow pointed ears, unkempt, lank hair, teeth like those of a dog, sharp pole, 
prominent chest, a hump on his back, pendant buttocks, and dirty garments. 
He seized the side of the bed whereon I lay, shook it with fearful violence, 
and kept saying : You have not long to remain here. Suddenly I awoke in 
alarm. ... I leaped out of my bed, ran to the monastery, threw myself 
at the foot of the altar, and there remained prostrate for a long time, frozen stiff, 
as it were, with fright. ? R. Glaber, Book v. ch. i. 

He saw the same devil on two other occasions. We find all the horror of 
nightmare in the following narrative from Guibert de Nogent : — 

' On a certain night, having been awakened by my sufferings — it was in 
winter, I believe — as I lay in my bed, thinking I should be in greater safety 
owing to the proximity of a lamp which gave a bright light, lo, all of a sudden, 
amid the profound silence of the night I thought I heard several voices from 
above. At the same moment my head received a shock as though I were 
dreaming ; I lost the use of my senses, and thought I saw a certain dead person 
appear, the while some one shouted out that he had died in the bath. Alarmed 
at this apparition, I leaped from my place and uttered a cry ; I saw that my 
lamp was out, and amid the fearful gloom discerned the demon, in his proper 
shape, standing erect, and beside the dead man. ' Guibert de Nogent, i. xv. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 327 

heart with wonderful rapidity ; but cannot use their thinking 
faculties. ' In childhood,' says Sir Samuel Baker, 'the young 
negro is more advanced than the white of the same age, but his 
mind does not bear the fruit of which it gave promise.' ' In New 
Zealand,' says Thompson, ' children of ten years are more intel- 
ligent than English children ; still, very few New Zealanders are 
capable of receiving, in their higher faculties, a culture equal to 
that of the English.' One of the reasons given in the United 
States for not educating negro children with the whites is, that 
after a certain age their progress does not correspond ; the intel- 
ligence of the negro appearing to be incapable of going beyond a 
certain point. Now if these facts are not to be attributed to an 
incurable defect of the nature, we have here an argument in favour 
of heredity. These savage minds are, as it were, uncultivated 
lands, which can only be broken up by the continuous toil of 
generations. Hence it is that in India the children of Brahmins, 
sprung from a class that has long been cultivated, display intel- 
ligence, insight, docility; while, according to the experience of 
missionaries, children of the other castes are considerably their 
inferiors in these respects. Again, a nation cannot with impunity 
be robbed of the most intelligent and the bravest of its population, 
for that is a selection in the wrong way, and its consequences are 
deplorable. ' By martyrdom and imprisonment,' says Galton, 
'the Spanish nation was drained of free-thinkers at the rate of 
1,000 persons annually, for the three centuries between 1481 and 
1 781 ; an average of 100 persons having been executed and 900 
imprisoned every year during that period. The actual data during 
those 300 years were 32,000 burnt, 17,000 persons burnt in effigy 
(I presume they mostly died in prison or escaped from Spain), 
and 291,000 condemned to various terms' of imprisonment and 
other penalties. It is impossible that any nation could stand a 
policy like this without paying a heavy penalty in the deterioration 
of its breed, as has notably been the result in the superstitious, 
unintelligent Spanish race of the present day.' 

Not to accumulate further examples, we may now conclude 
with the remarkable words of Herbert Spencer, which sum up the 
intellectual consequences of heredity no less than its organic 
conditions : c The human brain is an organized register of infinitely 



328 Heredity. 



numerous experiences received during the evolution of life, or, 
rather, during the evolution of that series of organisms through 
which the human organism has been reached. The effects of the 
most uniform and frequent of these experiences have been suc- 
cessively bequeathed, principal and interest ; and have slowly 
amounted to that high intelligence which lies latent in the brain 
of the infant — which the infant in after life exercises, and perhaps 
strengthens or further complicates — and which, with minute 
additions, it bequeaths to future generations. And thus it hap- 
pens that the European inherits from twenty to thirty cubic inches 
more brain than the Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties, 
as of music, which scarcely exist in some inferior human races, 
become congenital in superior ones. Thus it happens that out of 
savages unable to count up to the number of their fingers, and 
speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise at 
length our Newtons and Shakespeares.' 

IV. 

All that has been said of the intelligence may be applied to the 
sentiments. We have, even, in some measure anticipated that 
subject, for it was impossible to borrow facts from history which 
should not be concrete, synthetic — that is to say, mixed with 
sentiments and ideas ; it is only the analytic method of psychology 
which separates these two elements, almost always intimately 
united. 

If I think of any triangle, a sphere, a parabola, an algebraic 
operation, or any other mathematic truth, the result for me is a 
cognition, and nothing more. But most of the objects of which 
we think, or which we perceive, produce in us an agreeable or a 
disagreeable state — i.e. a sentiment — simultaneously with their 
cognition. Though we class them under the general heads of 
pleasure and pain, the sentiments are infinite in number, in 
shades, in intensity, etc. It may be said that every sentiment — 
not including those altogether inferior modes of sensitive action 
which are little more than instincts — implies at least an indistinct 
cognition. In that low region of the unconscious, sentiment and 
thought seem blended in indiscriminate unity, where they cannot 
be reached directly by any of our means of cognition. But so 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 329 

soon as consciousness awakens, sentiment has always an object ; 
it is always referable to a known or to a supposed cause ; it 
accompanies cognition; it wraps it round; it is, as it were, its 
radiation. Thus the evolution of intelligence and that of senti- 
ment are parallel. Just as intelligence begins with slight per- 
ceptions, both very simple and very gross, and by a process that 
goes on for ages becomes able to embrace the system of the uni- 
verse, and to state some complex problem in social philosophy; 
so sentiment starts with a very simple and very general manifesta- 
tion, as the instinctive love of an animal for its young, and thence 
rises to the most refined, exquisite, and cultured forms — the religious 
sentiment of Schleiermacher, and the aesthetic sentiment of 
Goethe or Heinrich Heine. And this transition from simple 
to complex is brought about, in the case of sentiment as in that 
of intelligence, by an integration, a fusion into one harmonious 
whole of many simple sentiments. It would require a power 
of analysis such as not even contemporary psychology yet appears 
to possess, to trace back, by successive decompositions, the sen- 
timent of nature, as found in the great poets of the nineteenth 
century, to the very simple sentiments and perceptions which 
are its basis. 

Certain forms of sentiment are totally wanting among primi- 
tive peoples. In the Australian language there are no words to 
translate justice, sin, crime. These people understand neither 
generosity, pity, nor clemency. They regard revenge as a duty. 
The reason is that their understanding cannot grasp the highly 
complicated moral relations from which these notions are derived. 
It has also been observed that certain sentiments of a refined 
nature, such as melancholy, charity, and the profound sentiment 
of nature, have their rise at a later period in history. The 
reason of this is easy to find : they presuppose the acquisition of 
many notions, each one of which is highly complex. The human 
soul must first have the idea of the infinite, of a vague and mys- 
terious beyond, to feel the painful depression and the refined 
emotion which that idea excites. It must have got beyond the 
narrow, local ideas of antiquity with regard to the tribe, the city, 
or the country, in order to experience a broader sentiment em- 
bracing all humanity. The sentiment of charity also — which is, 



">3 Heredity. 



o 



however, very ancient among Buddhists in the east — had its rise 
among a few chosen souls, philosophers or poets, then broadened 
out and developed, and during the first three centuries of the 
Christian era it spread out into the world under the influence of 
the broader ideas and the gentler characters which then prevailed. 
Humboldt, in his Cosmos, shows that the 'sentiment of nature' is a 
thing known only to the moderns in the west. 

We might endeavour to show, were this the proper place, that 
under each of these complex sentiments there are many real or 
imaginary ideas, each one of which produces in the human soul a 
simple sentiment; that out of the fusion of these simple sentiments 
there is formed a total sentiment; but for our present purpose it is 
enough to have shown that the evolution of sentiment is closely 
connected with that of the intelligence. The conclusion is, that 
if heredity is the condition of the specific development of intelli- 
gence, and if the evolution of sentiment is in strict accord with that 
of intelligence, then the sentiments too depend on heredity. And 
here again progress is secured, not only by the external influence 
of manners and customs, but also by the internal influence of 
heredity. 

Among acquired sentiments which have been hereditarily aug- 
mented, we may mention that of fear in many wild animals. Thus, 
* when the Falkland Islands were first visited by man, the large 
wolf-like dogs {Canis antarcticas) fearlessly came to meet Byron's 
sailors, who, mistaking this ignorant curiosity for ferocity, ran into 
the water to avoid them ; even recently a man, by holding a piece 
of meat in one hand and a knife in the other, could sometimes 
stick them at night. On an island in the Sea of Aral, when first 
discovered by Butakoff, the saigak antelopes, generally very timid 
and watchful, instead of flying from the men, looked at them with 
a sort of curiosity. So again, on the shores of the Mauritius, the 
manatee was not at first in the least afraid of man ; and thus it has 
been in several quarters of the world with seals and the morse. 
The birds of several islands have very slowly acquired and 
inherited a dread of man. At the Galapagos Archipelago I 
pushed with the muzzle of my gun hawks from a branch, and held 
out a pitcher of water for other birds to alight on and drink.' l 



1 Variation, etc., vol. i. ch. i. 



The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 331 

The sentiment of music is reckoned by Herbert Spencer among" 
those which are formed by hereditary accumulation. 'The habitual 
association of certain cadences of human speech with certain 
emotions, has slowly established in the race an organized and 
inherited connection between such cadences and such emotions. 
The combination of such cadences, more or less idealized, which 
constitutes melody, has all along had a meaning in the average 
mind, only because of the meaning which cadences had acquired 
in the average mind. By the continual hearing and practice of 
melody, there has been gained and transmitted an increasing 
musical sensibility.' When we call to mind that Mozart, Beeth- 
oven, Hummel, Haydn, and Weber, were the sons of distinguished 
composers and musicians, and if we note the surprising instance 
of the Bachs, we can hardly consider these facts to be spon- 
taneous variations. They ( can be ascribed to nothing but in- 
herited developments of structure, caused by augmentations of 
function.' l 

And Galton, assuming the standpoint of the heredity of the 
sentiments, with its consequences, passes this severe judgment 
on the Middle Ages. t The long period of the dark ages under 
which Europe has lain is due, I believe, in a very considerable 
degree, to the celibacy enjoined by religious orders on their 
votaries. Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle 
nature that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to 
literature, or to art, the social condition of the time was such that 
no refuge was possible elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. 
But the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy ; the conse- 
quence was that these gentle natures had no continuance ; and 
thus, by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am 
hardly able to speak of it without impatience, the Church brutalized 
the breed of our forefathers. She acted precisely as if she had 
aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone 
the parents of future generations. She practised the arts which 
breeders would use who aimed at creating ferocious, currish and 
stupid natures. No wonder that club law prevailed for centuries 
over Europe; the wonder rather is, that enough good remained in 

1 Spencer, Biology, i. § 82. 



33 2 Heredity. 



the veins of Europeans to enable their race to rise to its present 
very moderate level of natural morality.' 1 

Without dwelling any longer on the part played by heredity in 
the evolution of the sentiments, we will now consider certain 
curious phenomena of reversion, or atavism. 

We are sometimes astonished to see how obstinately the warlike 
and nomadic instincts which characterize savage life persist in 
certain civilized persons, and how difficult it is for certain natures 
to adapt themselves to that complex environment, the result of a 
host of opinions and habits, which we call civilization. Here we 
cannot but recognize a root of primitive savagery, preserved and 
vivified by heredity. 

Thus, the taste for w T ar is a sentiment very general among 
savages : for them life is warfare. This instinct, common to all 
primitive people, has been of service in the progress of humanity, 
if, as we may well believe, it has insured the victory of the stronger 
and more intelligent races over those less gifted. But these war- 
like instincts, preserved and accumulated by heredity, have become 
a true cause of destruction, of carnage, and of ruin. After having 
served to create social life, they are no longer of any use but to 
destroy it; after having assured the triumph of civilization, they now 
only contribute toward its overthrow. Even when these instincts 
do not bring two nations into conflict, they manifest themselves in 
ordinary life in certain individuals, by a quarrelsome, contentious 
disposition, which leads often to revenge, to duels, and to murder. 

So, too, with regard to the love of adventure : savage races possess 
this to such a degree that they launch out into the unknown with 
all the thoughtlessness of children. No doubt this love of ad- 
venture has still a rightful place even in the most advanced civili- 
zations, and it would be a great misfortune for humanity were it to 
disappear. Yet it cannot be denied that this enterprising, reckless 
spirit, serviceable as it is at first in opening new worlds to com- 
merce, travel, science, and art, has for some men been only a 
source of vain or ruinous excitement, the only one which circum- 
stances permit them — like gaming, speculation, and intrigue, or 
the selfish, turbulent ambition of conquerors, who sacrifice whole 
nations to their caprice. 



Hereditary Genius ; p. 357. 



The Psychological Conseqtcences of Heredity. 333 



6 We sometimes see the reappearance, in remote descendants, 
of ancient race-instincts that for many generations have lain 
dormant or hidden, but which now come to light as an unac- 
countable return to the moral type of the ancestors. The higher 
classes of society furnish us with the most striking instances of this ; 
as if the leisure and independence which their wealth assures to 
them, exempting them from the influence of the local environment 
and the present conditions of the life of their race, set at liberty 
psychical forces which are held in check among their contem- 
poraries. Thus an irresistible instinct for theft not only is some- 
times manifested among the children of cultivated races, in whom 
it is usually soon corrected by education, but even at times persists 
in adults, and with irresistible force betrays women belonging to 
our ancient noble castes into offences hardly excusable by their 
inability to conquer fate or evidently fatalistic character — unhappy 
heiresses of the old instincts of our barbarous conquerors. 

c So, too, with that passionate love of hunting, which is no longer 
of use under our present social conditions; which exists more or 
less as an instinct in every child; which even persists and develops 
so readily in every adult possessed of the means of indulging it, 
and inspires all our fashionable youth, and the remnants of our terri- 
torial nobility ; it can only be explained by the blind and predes- 
tined heredity of race-instincts that have long survived their utility, 
in the descendants of peoples for whom these same instincts were 
long essential conditions of life. Here, then, we have merely 
phenomena of atavism, which preserves, or bring to light at in- 
tervals, the psychical characteristics of remote ancestors/ 1 

It would be hard to find a more striking example of the tenacity 
of savage instincts, and of their tendency to reappear, than is found 
in the following narrative from a voyage to the Philippine Islands : — 

' These savages have ever been distinguished from the other 
Polynesian races by their unconquerable love of freedom. The 
repugnance of the Negritos (as the Philippine Islanders are called) 
to everything that could subjugate them or make them live by rule, 
will make them always objects of interest to the traveller. Here 
is an instance of their love of independence : — 

1 Origine de V Homme et de Soctetis, par Mme. Royer, ch. iv. 



334 Heredity. 



' In a raid made on the Isle of Lugon by native soldiers, under 
the orders of a Spanish officer, a young black about three years 
old was taken prisoner. He was carried to Manilla. An 
American having oifered the authorities to adopt him, the boy 
was baptized and named Pedrito. 

'When he was of proper age to receive some instruction, an 
effort was made to give him as good an education as is to be got 
in those remote regions. Old residents in the island, who knew 
the Negrito character, laughed in their sleeves at the attempts made 
to civilize Pedrito. They predicted that sooner or later the young 
savage would go back to his mountains. His adopted father, 
aware of the jests made on his care for Pedrito, was nettled by 
them, and announced his intention of taking the boy to Europe. 
He took him to New York, Paris, and London, and only brought 
him back to the Philippines at the end of two years' travelling. 

* Gifted with all the readiness of the black race, Pedrito spoke 
with equal fluency Spanish, French, and English ; he would wear 
on his feet nothing but fine, polished boots, and every one at 
Manilla to this day remembers the grave air, worthy of a "gentle- 
man," with which he met the first advances of persons who had not 
been introduced to him. Scarcely two years after his return 
from Europe he disappeared from the house of his protector. The 
mockers triumphed. We should probably never have learned 
what became of the philanthropic Yankee's adopted son were it 
not for the singular meeting a European had with him. A Prussian 
naturalist, a kinsman of the celebrated Humboldt, resolved to make 
the ascent of Mount Marivalis, not far from Manilla. He had 
almost reached the summit of the peak when he all at once found 
himself in presence of a swarm of little blacks. . . . The 
Prussian was preparing to sketch a few portraits when one of the 
savages drew near to him smiling, and asked him, in English, if 
he was acquainted at Manilla with an American of the name of 
Graham. It was our friend Pedrito. He told his entire history ; 
when it was ended, the naturalist tried, but in vain, to induce him 
to return with him to Manilla.' 1 

In missionary narratives we find abundance of similar facts. 

1 Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Juin, 1869. 



Moral Conseqtcences of Heredity. 335 

Thus the missionary societies sometimes adopt Chinese infants 
and have them educated in European institutions at great expense : 
they go back to their own country with the resolve to propagate 
the Christian religion, but scarcely have they disembarked when 
the spirit of their race seizes upon them, they forget their promises, 
and lose all their Christian beliefs. It might be supposed that 
they had never left China. 1 

To sum up, the consequences of heredity have been found to 
be twofold. Now it builds for the future, making possible, by the 
accumulation of simple sentiments, the production of sentiments 
more complex. Again it goes back towards the past, setting up 
again forms of sensitive activity once natural, now in disaccord 
with their environment. For there exist in the bottom of 
the soul, buried in the depths of our being, savage instincts, 
nomadic tastes, unconquered and sanguinary appetites which 
plumber but die not. They resemble those rudimentary organs 
which have outlived their functions, but which still remain as 
witnesses to the slow, progressive evolution of the forms of life. 
And these savage instincts, developed in man during the past, 
whilst he lived free amid the forests and streams, are from time 
to time recalled by heredity, by some trick which we do not under- 
stand, as though to let us measure with the eye the length of 
road over which we have travelled. 



CHAPTER III. 

MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF HEREDITY. 
I. 

At the first step in every study of morals we meet the inextri- 
cable problem of free-will. We are the less able to avoid it here, 
since it touches our subject at more than one point. We have 
already often directed attention to the fatalistic character of heredi- 
tary transmission, and the reader must see that what we give to 
heredity we take from free-will, and that heredity offers an abundant 



1 A. Reville, Revue des Deux Mondes, i w Sept bre '» 1869. 



^6 Heredity. 



oo 



source, though hitherto but little explored, of arguments in favour 
of fatalism. This much is certain, that heredity and free-will are 
two opposite and irreconcilable terms. The one creates in us 
the personality, the character ; it is the peculiar mark which dis- 
tinguishes us from what is not ourselves ; it is that in us which is 
most essential, most intimate. The other tends to substitute the 
species for the person, to blot out what is individual, and to sub- 
ject all to the impersonal fatalism of its laws, so that we are 
necessarily destined to feel, think, and act as our fathers, whose 
thoughts, apparently extinct, re-live in us. In a word, by free- 
will we are ourselves, by heredity we are others. 

We have, therefore, to consider the question of free-will. This 
we will endeavour to do very briefly, dismissing all solutions that 
have been disproved, and simply exhibiting the question as it 
stands in the present state of science. 

The partisans and the opponents of free-will may contend for 
ever without agreeing, provided each side stands on its own ground 
and will not quit it. Those who hold the affirmative proceed 
subjectively, saying : I have an inner sense of my freedom of will, 
therefore I am free. Those who hold those negative proceed objec- 
tively, saying : All things are regulated according to laws ; moral 
as well as physical science proves this, therefore free-will is an 
illusion. Each occupies a point of view totally different from that 
of the other. 

The argument of the former seems at first view decisive, but on 
reflection it is found less conclusive. If, with the greater part of 
the philosophers in the last two centuries, we consider psychologi- 
cal life as limited to the domain of consciousness, and if we identify 
the soul with the ego, then we may hold that the various motives 
of which we are conscious are counsel, advice, reasons, subjects of 
deliberation, but they are not that which deliberates, compares, 
selects ; and that, consequently, a voluntary act supposes, besides 
motives, something more. But if we may hold, as we may with 
truth, that besides the conscious life there is also an unconscious 
life whose influence is very great on our sentiments, our passions, 
our ideas, our activity in general, who can tell what part this uncon- 
scious agent may play in our determinations ? Hence the asser- 
tion, I have a consciousness that I am free, therefore I am free, 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 337 

» 

loses much of its value, because consciousness supplies only a 
portion of the elements of the problem, and by no means supplies 
them all. Furthermore, this unconscious agency, which is over- 
looked, may be, as we shall see, the very groundwork, the essence, 
and, as it were, the root of the will. 

As for those who, regarding the testimony of consciousness as 
secondary, adopt an objective method, they derive their arguments 
chiefly from two sources, physical and physiological phenomena, 
and historical and social facts. 

The physical world, say they, is subject to the laws of a deter- 
minism which allows no exception. Experience proves, and 
science demands this. Science is explanation \ to explain is to 
determine, and to determine a phenomenon is to refer it to its 
immediate conditions, or to its laws. We have no intelligible 
idea of a phenomenon that is produced spontaneously, with nothing 
to determine it to be, or to be in one way rather than in another. 
That would be a creation ex nihilo, a miracle. Leibnitz, and after 
him Laplace, have very forcibly expressed this truth. Physics and 
chemistry having demonstrated that nothing comes into being and 
that nothing perishes — neither matter nor force — that there occur 
only transformations, which themselves are determinable, the 
idea of universal determinism has become a scientific common- 
place. The principle of the correlation or equivalence of forces is 
the highest expression of this belief in determinism. Thus Mr. 
Herbert Spencer, taking his stand on this principle of equivalence, 
reduces all phenomena, without exception, to transformations of 
motion ; according to him, social facts arise out of certain psycho- 
logical states, and these out of certain physiological conditions, 
life itself resulting from the play of physical forces : ' And if it be 
asked, whence these physical forces which through the intermedium 
of the vital forces produce the social forces ? we reply, as we have 
all along, from solar radiation.' 

In a world where all things are so firmly linked together, what 
place is there for free-will ? What right have you, say the deter- 
minists, to break up the series of effects and causes, for the purpose 
of bringing in an unintelligible spontaneity ? You say, when I wish 
to move my arm I move it; but this movement is not, as you sup- 
pose, a creation — it must have already existed in your organism 



33§ ■ Heredity. 



under a different form ; and the very act whereby you form your 
resolution is conditioned, is subject to determinism. There is 
ground for believing that every mental state is determined by 
organic conditions, and that consequently it comes indirectly under 
the laws of universal determinism. Even though you dispute this, 
you are in no better case, for at least you must concede that this 
mental state depends on those which precede it, and that it is sub- 
ject to the laws of association, called into existence by association ; 
but these laws of association are only one form of determinism. 

It has been thought that this difficulty may be obviated by taking 
the ground that, supposing the voluntary act to be an effect, it is 
not therefore a necessary effect, and that causality does not always 
imply constraint, nor, consequently, necessity. To us this explana- 
tion seems not to go to the root of the question. The problem is 
not whether motives have or have not the character of coercion, 
but whether there is, besides motives and determining causes, a 
spontaneity which belongs to the individual himself. We might, 
indeed, regard our ideas, sentiments, and passions as forming a 
system of forces, each of which tends to pass over into action. 
There would occur between them action and reaction, attractions 
and repulsions, some of them combining to act in unison, others 
warring with one another, while others again are mutually neu- 
tralized wholly or in part. On this hypothesis the voluntary act 
— the final result of a conflict of forces — would not appear to be 
a constrained effect, and yet it would not have even the shadow 
of free-will. It would be so far from being free that, given the 
elementary forces, we might calculate the act as a problem in 
mechanics. If free-will exists, it can only consist in that property 
of the subject whereby it reacts against the determining causes, and 
in consequence of this reaction determines certain acts. 

Before we examine more closely this obscure question, which 
will bring us unexpectedly back again to heredity, let us briefly 
consider the difficulties raised against freedom of will by the moral 
sciences. 

Considerations drawn from the general course of history and 
from the sequence of historical facts are always somewhat vague. 
The study of social phenomena, classified and computed in statistics, 
gives a firmer ground for objections. As Quetelet, Buckle, Wundt, 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 339 

and Littre, 1 have observed, all acts commonly regarded as result- 
ing from free-will — such as murders, thefts, crimes and offences of 
all kinds, marriages, divorces, suicides — reach about the same 
figure year after year in a given country. Thus, in Belgium, in the 
five years 1841 — 5 the average number of marriages in cities was 
2,642 per annum, the utmost deviations being + 46 and — 136. 
In France, during the long period between 1826 and 1844, the 
number of criminals per annum varied from 8,237 to 6,299, an( i 
so on. 

It is certain that we cannot glance at the statistics of the various 
human acts without being struck with the regularity of their occur- 
rence. This proves that man's causality is governed by laws 
which admit very little variation, but it in no wise proves that such 
causality does not exist. We entirely believe in the existence of 
social and historical laws, but statistics cannot teach us whether 
these laws stand alone, or whether there is not besides an indeter- 
minate number of causes. As Wundt very well remarks, when we 
extend our observations from one man over a whole population, 
we eliminate all those causes which appertain only to the individual, 
or to a small portion of the population. We adopt the same pro- 
cedure as the physicist, who, in order to eliminate all accidental 
influences, always brings together a great number of observations 
and thence deduces a law. But when the statistician, having thus 
put aside the individual influences, concludes that they have no 
existence, it is as though the physicist were to conclude that the 
accidental influences he eliminated in the general did not exist in 
the individual. The physicist may disregard these, since for him 
they have no significance ; but as for the psychologist — who raises 
the question whether besides the social influences there exist 
causes of volition of an individual nature — he, of course, may not 
overlook those deviations proper to each particular case, for they 
indicate the existence of individual causes. 2 

From what has been said we get little more than negative 
notions about free-will, and, indeed, it is perhaps impossible to go 



1 The reader will find some curious statistics in the Revice de PhilosopJiie 
Positive, for Sept. 1 868. 

2 Wundt, vol. ii. ch. 56. 



34° Heredity. 



any further. For our part, we are inclined to regard free-will as a 
noumenon, and therefore an insoluble enigma. Still, taking their 
stand on the ground of experience, and without any pretensions of 
penetrating to ultimate principles, the most recent psychologists 
(of the school which treats psychology as a natural science) have 
given this question of free-will a new aspect, which enables us 
better to apprehend its relations with heredity. They all recognize 
the necessity of admitting in man a proper spontaneity, and this 
some of them hold to be chiefly physiological, others chiefly psy- 
chological. In England the chief exponent of these views is Bain, 
in Germany Wundt. 

According to Bain, 1 the germ of the will is to be found in that 
spontaneous activity which has its seat in the nerve-centres, and 
which needs no impressions from without, nor any interior feeling 
whatever to bring it into play. No psychologist before him had 
ever spoken of this spontaneous activity, or of its essential connec- 
tion with voluntary acts. The first mention of it is in Miiller. 
That physiologist observes that the foetus performs movements 
that evidently cannot depend on the complex causes which deter- 
mine the movements of the adult. The cause of these movements 
can exist only in the nerve-centres ; and as the nervous force is 
not equally distributed all over the body, but is accumulated in 
certain centres, these differences determine the foetus to move in 
one way rather than in another. Hence the germ of will-power is 
a spontaneous excitation; it is a primordial fact of our nature; and 
the stimulus proceeding from our sensations and sentiments does 
not supply the internal power, but merely determines the mode 
and the measure of action. 

While we admit the psychological importance of this discovery, 
and the merit of having clearly put it forward, we do not think 
that it helps us much. Mr. Bain tells us nothing about the origin 
of this nervous force, or of the causes which determine its accu- 
mulation in one place rather than in another. But he elsewhere 
has asserted, and as strongly as any one, that 'the true source, the 
true antecedent of all muscular power, is a liberal expenditure of 
nervous and muscular energy, which in the last resort derives from 



Bain, Emotions and WilL 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 341 

a good respiration and a good digestion .... that what carbon 
in a state of combustion is to a steam-engine, food and airare to 
the living organism, and that consciousness, which is produced by 
the expenditure of power, is no more the cause of this power than 
the light from the furnace is the source of the movement of the 
engine.' Nor is it easy to believe that this spontaneity does not 
itself come under mechanical laws. Nerve-force can be only the 
transformation of some prior physical force. The inequality of its 
distribution over the body must also depend on physical or 
mechanical causes. Hence we do not see what becomes of this 
' spontaneity,' acted on as it is on all sides by mechanical laws. 

Wundt, in a very remarkable and important work, full of facts 
and ideas, which unites to the experimental and positive method 
of English psychology a certain German boldness without rashness, 
puts the question of free-will under a different form. We have 
already seen that he protests against conclusions drawn from 
statistics, showing that in human acts there is a variable element 
which statistical science may rightly enough overlook, but which 
the psychologist must endeavour to reassert \ that, moreover, if 
statistics disclose to us the external causes of voluntary activity, 
they leave us in absolute ignorance of its internal causes. These 
internal causes constitute what Wundt very well denominates the 
personal factor {der personliche Factor), 

External factors, he says, we denominate motives, but not 
causes of will. ' Between motive and cause there exists an essen- 
tial difference. A cause necessarily produces its effect, not so a 
motive. It is true that a cause may be neutralized by another 
cause, or transformed into its effect, but in this transformation we 
can always track the effect of the prior cause and even measure it. 
A motive, on the other hand, can only either determine or not 
determine the will ; in the latter case, we have no means of know- 
ing its effect. The uncertainty of this connection between the 
motive and the will is based solely on the existence of the personal 
factor.' 1 



1 Vorlesungen iiber die Menschen und Thierseele, vol. ii. pp. 414, seq. See 
also, Annalise Fisiologica del Libero Arbitrio Umano, by Dr. Herzen, Florence. 
1870. 



34 2 Heredity. 



What, then, is this personal factor which thus mysteriously breaks 
in on the series of causes and effects ? It is ' the internal essence 
of the personality, the character/ There we must look for the 
root of will. i Character is the sole immediate cause of voluntary 
activity. Motives are always only indirect causes. Betwixt motives 
and the causality of character there is this great difference, that 
motives either are or may readily become conscious, whereas this 
causality is ever absolutely unconscious.' Hence character — per- 
sonality — must for ever remain an enigma, so far as its inmost 
nature is concerned ; it is the indeterminable Ding an sick of 
Kant. i The motives which determine the will are a part of the 
universal concatenation of causes ; but the personal factor, where- 
with will commences, does not enter into this concatenation. 
Whether this inmost essence of personality, upon which, in the 
last resort, rests all the difference between individuals, is itself 
subject to causality, we can never decide on the ground of 
direct experience.' 

' When it is asserted that the character of man is a product of 
air and light, of education and of destiny, of food and climate, 
and that it is necessarily predetermined by these influences, like 
every natural phenomenon, the conclusion is absolutely undemon- 
strable. Education and destiny presuppose a character which de- 
termines them : that is here taken to be an effect which is partly a 
cause. But the facts of psychical heredity make it very highly 
probable that, could we reach the initial point of the individual life, 
we should there find an independent germ of personality (Selbstan- 
diger) which cannot be determined from without, inasmuch as it 
precedes all external determination.' l 

We readily accept this doctrine of Wundt. It possesses the 
advantage of showing, on the one hand, that free-will, considered 
in its essence, is a noumenon ; and on the other hand, that on the 
ground of experience the fatalistic and the ordinary view are not 
irreconcilable ; but, inasmuch as the ultimate roots of the will 
repose in the unconscious, we may suspect such a reconciliation, 
but we cannot establish it. We will abide by this conclusion. We 
have elsewhere endeavoured to show — and we will not repeat 



1 Wundt, vol. ii. p. 416. 



Moral Consequences of Hei'edity. 343 



our argument — that psychology, even experimental psychology, 
must admit a certain element which comes before us as a fact ; 
this we call the ego, the person, the character : no other word will 
designate it properly, but of it we can only say that it is that 
which in us is inmost, and which distinguishes and differentiates 
us from what is not ourselves ; this it is by which our ideas, our 
sentiments, our sensations, our volitions are given to us as ours, 
and not as the phenomena of something outside ourselves. And 
we put the question, whether the instinct of self-preservation, 
which is so strong in animals, may not be this individual principle, 
cleaving stubbornly to existence, and struggling to maintain its 
hold on life ? 

If now we study the part played by personality, not now in 
psychology, but in history, the problem occurs in the same terms, 
and seems resolvable in the same way. The individual is subject 
to the laws of nature, both physical and moral, and is governed 
by them. But beyond the almost boundless field of determinism 
we have had a glimpse of the possibility, and even the necessity, 
of an autonomy, a spontaneity. So, too, in history, where the 
action of natural laws is great, where, indeed, it is nearly every- 
thing, we must also assign its due part to personality, as re- 
presented especially by great men. 'The expedition of Alex- 
ander and the poetry of Homer are both due to individuals. 
But had Alexander never lived it is probable that the course of 
history would have been other than it has been ; and if Homer 
had not lived perhaps the religion and the manners of the Greeks 
would have taken another form. . . . Individual will, there- 
fore, exerts a great influence . . . yet this influence is but a mo- 
mentary cause. Homer changed the manners of the Greeks only 
because the Greeks made his poetic creations their own; and 
Alexander could never have made his mark so deeply in history, 
were it not that his will had the same ground as the general will.' 1 

Both history and psychology, then, appear to lead us to the 
conclusion that determinism does not suffice to explain every- 
thing. But if we push our inquiries still further, we are met by 
a fresh difficulty. With regard to this personality — whose true 

1 Wundt, ibid. p. 408. 



344 Heredity. 



nature we despair of knowing, because it rests in the unfathom- 
able depths of the unconscious — do we at least know whence it is, 
what is its origin ? 

Clearly, there can be but two hypotheses : either we must say 
that at every birth there is an act of special creation, which places 
in each being the germ of its character, of its personality ; or we 
must admit that this germ is the product of preceding generations, 
and that it necessarily comes from the nature of the parents and 
from the circumstances of the generative act. 

The first hypothesis is so unscientific that it is hardly worth 
discussing. Hence we have to consider only the second. 

Here, then, we find ourselves at the very heart of the matter. 
We imagined we were escaping from heredity, and now we meet 
with it in that very germ which is the one thing in us which is 
inmost, most essential and most personal. After having shown, by 
a long enumeration of facts, that the sensitive and intellectual 
faculties are transmitted — that we may inherit an instinct, a 
passion, a variety of imagination, as well as consumption, or 
rickets, or long life — we expected that at least one portion of 
psychological life would be found to lie beyond the reach of deter- 
minism, and that character, personality, the ego, would be found 
exempt from the law of heredity. But heredity, or in other words 
determinism, meets us on every side, from within and from without. 
Nay, even if with the evolutionists we recognize in heredity a force 
which not only preserves, but which also creates by accumulation, 
then not only is the character transmitted, but it is the work of 
fate, made up bit by bit, by the slow and unconscious but ever 
accumulating toil of generations. The question becomes perfectly 
inextricable — an enigma within an enigma. 

We are not so simple as to attempt its solution. We touch here 
upon that region of the unknowable to which every inquiry into 
first causes inevitably leads. Here science ends, and it is as little 
scientific to hold with the fatalists that there exists in the universe 
only an absolute determinism, without exception, as to say with 
their opponents that determinism is only a lower mode of ex- 
istence, lying outside of and beneath free-will. Though the former 
school may show very well that free-will is governed by fixed laws, 
they can bring forward no fact to decide whether the final cause of 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 345 

all things is mechanism or free-will To this end the physiological 
and psychological phenomenon of generation would have to be 
without mystery, whereas such is not the case. On the other 
hand, when Schopenhauer and his followers assert that free-will 
lies without the categories of causality, time and space, by the aid 
of which we think, and that these forms of thought are inappli- 
cable to it because that in its essence it is not a phenomenon, 
and therefore cannot fall into the universal concatenation — they 
advance a metaphysical hypothesis, perhaps true, certainly in- 
genious and specious, but for which verification is impossible ; 
they offer a possibility as a reality. 

But taking, as we do, the humble standpoint of experience, 
we can only say that if character — what Kant calls empiric 
character — is inherited, it is so only with many exceptions ; that 
this heredity is even harder to prove than that of a simple mode 
of psychical activity; and that in proportion as we descend 
towards the unconscious, which is the groundwork of the character, 
this affirmation becomes more and more hypothetical, without, 
however, being stripped of probability. 

We can now reach a practical conclusion. The basis of morals 
is responsibility ; can it be said that heredity suppresses this ? 
There is no universal reply to this question, but we may reduce all 
the particular cases under two principal heads. 

One of these comprises all those cases where inherited ten- 
dencies do not possess an irresistible character. Man inherits 
from his ancestors certain modes of sensation and of thought, and 
is therefore disposed to will, and consequently to act as they did. 
This heredity of impulses and tendencies constitutes an order of 
internal influences, in the midst of which the individual lives, but 
which he has the power of judging and of overcoming. They do 
not, any more than any other internal or external circumstances, 
imply the suppression of free-will, the abolition of the personal 
factor, or the irresistible necessity of acts. 'In a word, it is for 
heredity, as for spontaneity, to give a more or less sensible inclina- 
tion to good or evil, and consequently more or less disposition to 
commit faults. But vice or virtue does not depend on either; vice 
or virtue is not self-existent — they do not consist in the fatal 
nature of the internal or external impulses acting on us, but in the 



346 Heredity. 



mental and executive agreement of the will. For all these reasons 
they are personal — they depend on free-will, and are not hereditary.' 

The second case is that in which inherited tendencies possess 
an irresistible character. Not to speak of those states of well- 
defined insanity in which the individual is alienns a se, where per- 
sonality disappears, assailed and finally overcome by fatal impulses 
or fixed ideas, we have seen indisputable cases where the tendency 
to vice and to crime is a heritage which descends with the cer- 
tainty of fate. The personal factor has then no strength to react 
against these interior impulses. Let the reader recall the many 
instances of this kind cited under the head of Heredity of Senti- 
ments and Passions. In such cases there is no responsibility. 

In this unceasing conflict which goes on within us between 
individual and specific characteristics, between personality and 
heredity, and, in more general terms, between free-will and fate, 
free-will is more frequently overcome than is commonly supposed. 
But this is often not admitted, and as Burdach well observes, with 
the excellent intention of proving to man that he is free, we too 
often forget 'that heredity has actually more power over our 
mental constitution and our character than all external influences, 
physical or moral.' This we shall now see under another form, 
when we inquire into the relations between education and heredity. 

ii. 

Great stress has recently been laid on the influence of the 
physical environment. It has been shown how the climate, the 
air, the character of the soil, the diet, the nature of the food 
and drink — all that in physiology is comprised under the tech- 
nical terms circumfusa, zngesta, etc. — shape the human organism 
by their incessant action ; how those latent, silent sensations which 
do not come into consciousness, but still are ever thronging the 
nerves of sense, eventually form that habitual mode of the con- 
stitution which we call temperament. 

The influence of education is analogous. It is a moral environ- 
ment, and its result is the creation of a habit. We might even 
affirm that this moral environment is as complex, as hetero- 
geneous and changeable, as any physical environment. For 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 347 

education, in the full and exact meaning of the term, does not 
consist simply of the lessons of our parents and teachers : manners, 
religious beliefs, what we read, what we hear, all these are so many- 
silent influences which act on the mind, just as latent sensations 
act on the body, and which contribute to our education; that is to 
say, they cause us to contract habits. 

But we must not exaggerate. Some — such as Lamarck and his 
daring predecessors — have attributed so much to the influence of the 
physical environment as to make it simply a creator ; and so great 
power has often been attributed to education, that the individual 
character would be its work, to the exclusion of all native energy. 
Thus the expression of Leibnitz was bold : Entrust me with educa- 
tion, and in less than a century I will change the face of Europe. 
Descartes too, attributing to his method what was the fruit of his 
genius, goes so far as to say that ' sound understanding (bon sens) 
is the most widely diffused thing in all the world, and all differences 
between mind and mind spring from the fact that we conduct our 
thoughts over different routes.' The sensist school, in its abhor- 
rence for everything innate, has exaggerated even this view. 
According to Locke, ' out of one hundred men more than ninety 
are good or bad, useful or harmful to society, owing to the educa- 
tion they have received.' Helvetius, carrying this view to its 
extreme, holds that ' all men are born equal and with equal facul- 
ties, and that education alone produces a difference between them.' 
With astonishing obstinacy he propounds the incredible paradox 
that men do not differ from one another in acuteness of sense, 
reach of memory, or capacity for attention, and that all possess in 
themselves the power of rising to the highest ideas ; differences of 
mind depend entirely on circumstances. 1 

It is highly important that we ascribe to education only what 
belongs to it, and that w r e vindicate against it the rights of spon- 
taneity, for the cause of spontaneity is our own. To us spontaneity 
and heredity are one. Whether certain psychic qualities result 
from spontaneous variation, or from hereditary transmission, is a 
question of no importance. We have only to show that they exist 
before education, which may at times transform them, but never 

1 De P Esprit, 3 e Discours. 



34-8 Heredity. 



creates them ; and that the opponents of heredity err when they 
explain by the external cause of education what results from the 
internal cause of character. Their argument often consists in 
stating this dilemma, which to them appears decisive : Either 
children do not resemble their parents, and then there is no law 
of heredity, or they do resemble them morally, and then there is 
no need to look for any other cause than education. It is per- 
fectly natural that a painter or a musician should teach his art to 
his son, that a thief should train his children to theft, that a child 
born amid debauchery should bear the impress of his surround- 
ings. 

We must do Gall the justice to admit that he clearly saw and 
proved, in the teeth of the prevailing prejudices, that the faculties 
which occur in all the individuals of a species exist in the various 
individuals in very different degrees, and that this variety of apti- 
tudes, propensities and characteristics is a universal fact common 
to all classes of beings, independently of education. Thus, among 
domesticated animals, all spaniels and pointers by no means 
exhibit the same acuteness of scent, the same skill in tracking, etc. ; 
shepherd dogs are by no means all gifted with the same instinct ; 
racehorses of the same stock differ from one another in speed, and 
draught horses of the same race differ from one another in strength. 
The same is true of wild animals. Singing birds have by nature 
the note peculiar to their species, but they differ from one another 
in the style, the depth, the range, and the charm of their voice. 
Pierquin has even discovered among horses and dogs imbeciles, 
maniacs, and lunatics. 

In the case of man, a few well chosen instances will suffice to 
show the part played by spontaneity, often only another name for 
heredity, and to cut short the incomplete explanations drawn from 
the influence of education. The reader will remember how 
D'Alembert, a foundling, brought up by a poor glazier's wife, 
without means or advice, derided by his adoptive mother, his 
comrades, and his master, who did not understand him, still went 
his way without losing courage, and became at twenty-four a 
member of the Academie des Sciences ; and this was only the 
beginning of his fame. Suppose him brought up by his own 
mother, Mademoiselle de Tencin, admitted at an early age to that 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 349. 

famous salon where so many men of note were wont to assemble, 
initiated by them into the problems of science and philosophy, 
refined by their conversation : in such case the opponents of 
heredity could not fail to see in his genius the product of his edu- 
cation. The lives of most great men show that the influence of 
education on them was in some instances of no moment at all, in 
others injurious, generally trifling. If we take great captains, that 
is to say, the men whose entrance into life is most easily fixed 
because it is the most brilliant, we find Alexander entering on 
his career as a conqueror at the age of twenty; Scipio Africanus 
(the elder) at twenty-four, Charlemagne at thirty, Charles XII. at 
eighteen, Prince Eugene commanding the Austrian army at twenty- 
five, Buonaparte the army of Italy at twenty-six, etc. And the 
same precocity in many thinkers, artists, inventors, and men of 
science, shows how small a thing education is, compared with 
spontaneity. 

We restrict education, as we think, within its just limits, when 
we say that its power is never absolute and that it exerts no effica- 
cious action except upon mediocre natures. Suppose the various 
human intelligences to be so graduated as to form a great linear- 
series, rising from idiocy, the bottom of the scale, to genius, which 
is at the top. The influence of education is at its minimum at 
the two ends of the series. On the idiot it has hardly any effect ; 
unheard of exertions and prodigies of patience and ingenuity often 
produce only insignificant and transient results. But as we rise 
towards the middle degrees this influence grows greater. It 
attains its maximum in average minds, which, being neither good 
nor bad, are much what chance makes them ; but as we ascend to 
the higher forms of intelligence we see it again decrease, and as 
we come nearer to the highest order of genius it tends towards its 
minimum. 

So variable is the influence of education that we may doubt 
whether it is ever absolute. It is needless to cite facts from his- 
tory, which tells only of men of eminence or distinction — we need 
only appeal to every-day experience. It is not rare to find 
children sceptical in religious 'families, or religious in sceptical 
families ; debauched men amid good examples, or ambitious men 
in a family of retiring, peaceable disposition. Yet we are speaking 



35° Heredity. 



only of ordinary people, whose life passes away on a restricted stage, 
who die and are forgotten. 

Education is a sum of habits : among civilized nations it builds 
up an edifice so skilfully contrived, so complicated, so labo- 
riously raised, that we are astonished if we examine it in detail. 
Compare the savage with the accomplished gentleman, and how 
great is the difference. The fact is that six thousand years and 
more stand between the two. Many of the habits which we con- 
tract through education have cost the race centuries of effort. 
Education has to fix in us the results achieved by many hundreds 
of generations. Millions of men have been needed to invent and 
bring to perfection those methods which develop the body, culti- 
vate the mind, and fashion the manners. Consider what is implied 
in the words 'a complete education.' To know how to walk, to 
run, to wrestle, to fence, to ride, and all other bodily exercises; to 
know several languages, to make verses, and study music, drawing, 
painting; to reflect and reason; to be conformed to the customs, 
usages, and conventionalities of society. Each of these acts, and 
many others, must needs have become a habit, an almost mechan- 
ical mode of life in us, and a perfect education results from the 
fusion of these habits. There must needs have been formed in us, 
by many artificial processes, a second nature, which so envelops our 
original nature as to seem to have absorbed it. Most commonly, 
however, such is not the case. It is not rare in our own times to 
find in families of high, and even princely station, individuals over- 
laid with such an education as this, but it is only a very thin 
covering indeed — a glossy varnish that on the slightest friction 
scales off, and then the true, that is the brute, nature appears with 
all its savage instincts and unbridled appetites; in an instant it 
bursts all the bonds which civilization has imposed upon it, and 
finds itself, as it were, at home in barbarism. We are sometimes 
amazed at seeing nations highly civilized, gentle, humane, charit- 
able in time of peace, giving themselves up to every excess so soon 
as war has broken out. The reason of this is that war, being a 
return to the savage state, awakens the primitive nature of man, 
as it subsisted prior to culture, and brings it back with all its 
heroic daring, its worship of force, and its boundless lusts. 

As Carlyle has said, civilization is only a covering underneath 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 351 

which the savage nature of man continually burns with an infernal 
fire. 

We must ever bear in mind these facts, and be careful not to be- 
lieve that education explains everything. We would not, however, 
in the least detract from its importance. Education, after centuries 
of effort, has made us what we are. Moreover, to bear sway over 
average minds is in itself a grand part to play; for though it is the 
higher minds that act, it is mediocre minds that react, and history 
teaches that the progress of humanity is as much the result of the 
reactions which communicate motion, as of the actions which first 
determine it 



in. 

We are now in a position to inquire into the part which heredity 
plays in the formation of moral habits. Our task were easy enough 
if the genesis of moral ideas and the history of their development 
had been discovered. Had some one, taking for his standpoint 
the doctrine of evolution, shown through what successive phases 
human morality must needs have passed in order to rise from the 
lower forms of savage life to the higher forms of our present civili- 
zation; had the various stages of this progress been so marked that 
we might see their logical dependence, and understand why one 
precedes and another follows, and wherein the former is the condi- 
tion of the latter — we could then readily discover the place of 
heredity as a factor in this development. Unfortunately, the 
genesis of moral ideas has never been traced with anything like 
perfection, and it is a work to be attempted only by some master 
hand. While we wait for this to be done by Mr. Spencer in his 
Principles of Sociology \ we are compelled to attempt here a coarse 
and imperfect sketch. 

In doing this there are two possible methods. We might pro- 
ceed analytically, starting from current moral ideas, as now mani- 
fested in the usages, laws, and opinions of civilized nations ; then, 
tracing back the course of history, we would eliminate all sentiments 
of new formation, thus by successive simplifications reaching 
the basis, the essential condition of all morality. Or we might 
proceed synthetically, starting from the rudest state of society, and 



352 Heredity. 



then, with the aid of anthropology, psychology, philology and history, 
determining the evolution of moral ideas and their steady progress 
from the simple to the complex. There is of course a point where 
history fails us. History, being the consciousness of civilized 
nations, necessarily implies continuity of tradition, whether oral or 
written; and such continuity could not be found among people 
without arts, without monuments, and whose records are only from, 
day to day. But where history falls short, anthropology may yet 
serve as a guide. 

Yet we will not inquire whether the human race has ever had a 
< purely physiological period.' It suffices for us to begin our inves- 
tigation with that primitive epoch which we call the savage state. 
The savage is like the child : all travellers are unanimous on this 
point. He is chiefly characterized, psychically, by the exclusive 
predominance of sensibility and imagination (under their lower 
forms), and consequently, from the moral point of view, by the 
most absolute individualism. Their impressions and their ideas 
possess an extraordinary mobility, which finds expression in an 
exuberance of gesture, exclamations, contortions, and monkey-tricks. 
They act less with design than by caprice. . The portrait drawn by 
Dumont d'Urville of the natives of Australia, answers in every 
respect to children, even in the minor details, especially the child- 
ish pronunciation of certain letters, such as s and r. It is impos- 
sible that they should possess anything more than the merest 
outlines of morality. As each individual is at every moment 
carried away by violent and sudden outbursts of passion, as his life 
is only a whirlwind of caprices, and as, in the absence of reflection, 
there is never a moment's interval between desire and act, the 
result is a turbulent and sanguinary existence, without anything 
like order or reason. 

The first progress is made under the pressure of authority. 
The wisest, speaking as kings or priests in the name of a God, 
or of a supernatural power — which alone has any control over 
those mid natures — impose restrictions on this absolute liberty 
of the individual. These ordinances, though frequently violated, 
are nevertheless the first germ of social justice ; and so soon as 
some regard for property is established we discern the [first linea- 
ments of a civilization. Such were, half a century ago, the 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 353 

inhabitants of New Zealand and the Tonga Islands. The former, 
who were superior to the average Australian, more thoughtful and 
more intelligent, already had clear notions about the rights of pro- 
perty, and even about the rights of nations — they put trust in the 
word of their enemies. Theft was rare among them. Marsden 
says that a chief was angry with a man who had stolen some old 
iron, and he gives other instances of their honesty. 1 

Any tribe that is incapable of rising to this idea of justice and 
of reciprocal duties, or of incorporating it in their manners, is fated 
to perish by the inevitable logic of events. This leads us to 
estimate at its true value a doctrine still largely diffused, which 
regards morality as simply conventional. The philosophers of the 
eighteenth century were disinclined to see in it anything more than 
an artificial production, based on a primitive contract. Before their 
time, Pascal had advanced this theory in a famous passage, where 
he himself did but express a thought previously uttered by Mon- 
taigne: 'They do but trifle when, in order to give certitude to laws, 
they say that some of them are stable, perpetual, and immovable, 
which they call natural laws.' 

This scepticism has been opposed only by denunciation and 
denial, based on vague proofs. Perhaps if its opponents had 
accepted the evolution of moral ideas they would have found a 
better answer, because that analysis, penetrating to the very basis of 
morality, shows its nature and its stability. We might say that 
morality is natural, as is proved by the fact that it is an absolute 
condition of man's existence, and might establish our position 
thus : — man, considered as an intelligent being, can only live in 
a society ; this is proved by the most positive facts ; in a state of 
isolation man is without a mind. On the other hand, society, 
even in its simplest form, can only exist on certain definite con- 
ditions. Suppose a society whose members hold it to be right, 
or else simply indifferent, to murder and pillage one another; 
where parents abandon their children, and children maltreat their 
parents — it is quite clear that such a society cannot subsist; it 
will perish by a vice inherent in its very constitution. As well 

1 For the particulars see Dumont d'Urville, tomes iii. and iv., Pieces Justifi- 
catives. 

2 A 



354 Heredity. 



might we say that an acephalous or hydrocephalous monster can 
live and breed — which would be a physiological absurdity. It is 
inevitable that every monster and every organism outside of the 
normal conditions of existence shall perish ; and this is true also 
of the body social. But morality reduced to- its essentials — that 
is, to those natural laws which excite Montaigne's merriment — 
consists in those essential conditions without which man dis- 
appears. Thus, to sum up, without morality no society, and 
without society no human race. Therefore we have here no con- 
vention, and we may truly say morality is natural, since it is a 
necessary consequence of the very nature of things. Further, 
we may say that it is immutable, necessary, imperative; not 
employing these terms in the vague, transcendental and incom- 
prehensible sense usually given to them, but in a precise, positive, 
and unambiguous sense; for they signify that morality is as stable 
as nature, and its necessity is that of logic. 

Thus the idea of evolution, though it looks like empiricism, 
leads to unexpected results. If we could dwell upon the point, 
it would also, doubtless, give us a little better understanding of 
what is meant by progress in morals. Usually, in treating this 
subject, it is deemed sufficient to state that morality is immutable 
in substance, but variable in accidents; which is true, but vague. 
To hold, on the one hand, that it is wholly subject to change is 
to deprive it of all stability, of all authority, and to deny what is 
unquestionable — that morality is inherent in the nature of things. 
On the other hand, to assert that it is subject to no change is to 
give the lie to history, to mutilate facts, to give a partial expla- 
nation for a complete one, to juggle with difficulties instead of 
resolving them. It is very evident that the moral ideas of the 
France of to-day do not resemble those of the Franks in the time 
of the long-haired kings ; and that no bishop of our day would 
judge the crimes of Clovis as did Gregory of Tours, though he 
sprang from a saintly family and was himself almost canonized. 

Unfortunately for us, this investigation has never been made. 
If the invariable in morals had been clearly discriminated from 
the variable, the primitive from the acquired, it would be easier to 
ascertain the influence of heredity, for it can act only on the 
variable element, which is subject to the law of evolution. Much 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 355 

has been said about this invariable basis, but very little has been 
fixed. Without actually attempting to do so here, it is enough to 
state how the question presents itself to us. In the first place it 
is evident that if this common basis exists — if there be a certain 
number of moral truths serving as a foundation for all the rest, 
however diverse and complicated, and as a criterion to qualify our 
own acts and those of others — then this ultimate law must be very 
general in its character, and consequently very vague. Since, ex 
hypothesis it must be found at the root of every moral act, present, 
past and future, actual or possible, and as consequently it 
applies to an incalculable number of facts, it can only be ab- 
stracted by a very elaborate process; and the operation whereby 
we thus pose it in abstracto is, though it has a certain scientific 
utility, really artificial. The law is not thus presented to us 
simply and nakedly ; we always find it as an integral part of a 
whole. But those ultimate elements which seem to lie at the root 
of every moral act, and which abstraction isolates, are these : seek 
your own good — seek the good of others. These formulas may 
be thus translated : respect yourself — respect others ; but this 
latter expression is more concrete and consequently less general 
than the other. These formulas alone appear to us to be ultimate, 
because they alone are natural ; and they appear natural to us 
because they are those absolute conditions of existence of which 
we have already spoken. 

If this be admitted, we are, perhaps, in a way to draw a suffi- 
cient line of demarcation between the invariable and the variable 
in morals. These ultimate precepts represent only a very small 
part of the acts which we call moral ; they are only one element 
among many. Every moral act, such as is every moment per- 
formed among civilized people, may be likened to some very 
complex compound, to some highly complicated motion, or to 
some organic product. The moral element proper enters into it 
as a component part, but it must combine with a great number of 
other elements to produce the total act. This is the reason why 
it often escapes our notice. For instance, the act of studying 
mechanics may seem to bear no relation to the two formulas 
already stated. On reflection, a true relation will be discovered 
between them. But as this act is highly complex, presupposing 



356 Heredity. 



knowledge previously acquired, a certain mental aptitude, a 
special mental process, a certain professional or other aim — 
each of these secondary facts being itself highly complex — the 
moral element is, as it were, lost amid this great mass of elements, 
which are integrated in one single fact. 

Hence the element which we have called invariable constitutes 
only a trifling part of our moral states and moral acts. The 
variable element consists of that sum of ideas, judgments, ratio- 
cinations, recollections, passions, sentiments, habits, views often 
narrow and incomplete, prejudices and errors which vary from 
century to century, between nation and nation, and between indi- 
vidual and individual, according to the incessant evolution of 
the human mind. 

By taking this point of view we see facts, apparently at total 
variance one with another, fall under one and the same moral 
formula, much as the ascent of balloons and the fall of bodies 
come under the one law of gravitation. If I take in a deserted 
child, if I care for and educate it, if I spare no pains to train it 
to good habits, and if thus I succeed in making it an accom- 
plished man, assuredly every one will say that my conduct is 
worthy of praise. Now if in thought we go back two centuries, 
and imagine ourselves in Madrid or Seville at the instant when 
an auto-da-fe is about to take place, we see the court decked 
as for a holiday; crowds throng the streets, and there is procession 
of penitents and monks — the cruel pomp is revolting. Yet these 
two acts, unlike though they be, are reducible to one and the 
same moral idea — do good to others ; but in the former instance 
this idea is applied only to true judgments, while in the latter case 
it is tangled in a web of false notions, such as an hypothetical 
belief accepted as certain, a right of coercion wrongfully exerted, 
etc., which eventually annihilate the moral idea. 

It may be said that this is to assign a very small part to the 
moral element properly so called. But the fact is that this in- 
variable basis is necessarily very restricted, as we have shown. 
What perfects it — and what varies — is the ideas and judgments 
that come into association with it. Hence we conclude that there 
is a great deal of truth in the much disputed adage — Ornnis 
fieccans est ignorans. 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 357 

This brings us back to our subject, which we seemed to have 
forgotten. If it be admitted that the moral act comprises a great 
number of ideas, judgments and sentiments, as has been already 
shown by the influence of heredity on the development of sensi- 
bility and intelligence, then heredity must also exert a great 
influence on the formation of habits and of moral ideas — moral 
heredity is only a form of psychical heredity. It will suffice, then, 
to show briefly how heredity has contributed to insure the moral 
conditions of the evolution of society. 

It is generally admitted that primitive societies must have passed 
through three phases — hunting, pastoral, and agricultural. It is 
only with the latter that civilization begins. 

In the hunter stage, which is the condition of all existing savages, 
communities live by the chase, by fishing, and by war. This phase 
is characterized by the unlimited development of warlike instincts, 
bloodthirsty appetites, and a wandering, reckless life. Savages, 
like children, are prone to follow their sensual and turbulent pas- 
sions. Communities that have been unable to rise out of this 
state, have either perished or drag out a miserable existence until 
some superior race shall exterminate them. Such as have been 
able to submit to the yoke of rude laws, imposed upon them by 
their sages, have in time acquired less brutal manners and less 
furious appetites. It is very likely that in this case heredity has 
acted by accumulation. The earlier generations submitted only 
with great repugnance to laws which galled them sorely, by 
restraining their most natural tendencies. Yet they in this way 
acquired somewhat gentler habits, and these habits, transmitted 
by heredity, made succeeding generations more ready to obey the 
law. And thus, amid many exceptions and frequent reversions to 
primitive appetites (phenomena of atavism), new steps in advance 
were ever possible, and savage instincts continually diminished. 

The same is to be said of nomad peoples : for instance, the Tartars 
and the Mongols. Their manners are less fierce, and their habits 
more sociable than those of the hunter tribes, but yet their taste 
for an adventurous life detains them in a low form of civilization. 
Civilization must be attached to the soil; it requires a sedentary 
life, cities, roads, individual property — in short, those fixed elements 
which are its conditions of existence. The Turks and the Mant- 



35^ Heredity. 



chus have succeeded, under the influence of laws and of heredity, 
in losing the nomad instincts of their races, and in adopting the 
civilization of the peoples they conquered. Others, the Mongols 
for instance, have shown themselves incapable of this, after their 
hour of glory under Gengis Khan and Tamerlane. 

Nations destined for social life have early possessed the art of 
agriculture, together with all that it implies : division of property, 
agricultural arts and implements, and care for the future. Here 
would begin the really difficult and delicate part of our task, and 
this, for lack of a scientific genesis of moral ideas, we cannot 
attempt. It would be requisite to show how each progressive step 
of civilization presupposes new conditions of existence ; how to 
those very simple conditions of existence which, as we have said, 
are the groundwork of morals, succeed conditions of existence 
more and more complex, which have rendered possible every fresh 
stage in civilization. Then we should have to show the part 
played by heredity in the adaptation of successive generations to 
these new conditions. But we can here merely observe that, the 
primitive state of mankind being characterized by a lawless indi- 
vidualism, the development of sympathetic tendencies — those called 
' altruistic ' by the positivist school — becomes more and more 
necessary in proportion as civilization increases. These tendencies 
certainly exist, whatever may have been said of them by those who 
would reduce all our acts to egoism. They are natural, as is 
proved by psychological analysis. The attempt has even been 
ingeniously made to demonstrate this physically, by showing that 
in the lowest grade of the biological scale, where the sexes are not 
distinct, the individual is restricted to egoistic tendencies alone ; 
whereas, so soon as the difference of sex appears, it necessarily 
brings with itself tendencies of a different nature, which go beyond 
the individual. These gross sympathetic instincts of the lower 
organisms are developed in proportion with the growth of intelli- 
gence. 

There is no doubt that there exist in man natural sympathetic 
tendencies, which are the germs of those ulterior complex senti- 
ments which we call patriotism, philanthropy, devotion to a society 
or an idea. From what has been said in the preceding chapter as 
to the genesis of these complex ideas and sentiments, we can form 



Moral Consequences of Heredity. 359 

some notion of the part played by heredity in the formation of 
moral habits, the evolution of morals being really but the evolution 
of intelligence. 

Heredity, however, has a reverse side. If by accumulation it 
aids progress, it at the same time preserves or recalls, in the midst 
of civilization, sentiments and tendencies that are by no means 
related to such an environment. We have already given instances 
of this. It is perfectly natural to recognize facts of atavism in 
those sanguinary instincts, those savage tastes, that insane and 
objectless passion for wild pursuits, that insatiable desire for 
adventure, w T hich Ave find in certain men who are, as it would seem, 
highly civilized. No doubt there is in these vices such a ground- 
work of power and greatness that the utter suppression of them 
would be a weakening of the living forces of humanity; and it is 
therefore the office of civilization to regulate these instincts, not to 
destroy them. It utilizes this troubled activity by directing it into 
wild lands, against unexplored regions. There, beyond the limits 
of civilization, these men work for civilization. Those of them 
who remain within her pale, but have the power of adapting them- 
selves to it, are but a curse to society, for in them primitive 
humanity reappears, though its natural environment has vanished. 

Then science verifies what many religions have discerned indis- 
tinctly, and expressed after their own fashion. It is a belief com- 
mon to them that man is a fallen creature, and that he bears the 
stain of an original transgression, which is transmitted by heredity. 
Science interprets this vague hypothesis. Without inquiring what 
was the original state of humanity, we may confidently hold it to 
have been lowly enough. Primitive man, ignorant and idealess, 
the slave of his appetites and instincts, which were simply the forces 
of nature freely acting in him, rose but very gradually to the con- 
ception of the ideal. Art, poetry, science, morality, all those 
highest manifestations of the human soul, are like some frail and 
precious plant which has come late into being and been enriched 
by the long toil of generations. It is as impossible to govern life 
without the ideal as it is to steer a ship without compass or stars; 
still the ideal was not revealed to man all at once, but only little 
by little. Each people has had its own ideal ; each generation 
has enabled the succeeding generation to aspire towards a more 



360 Heredity. 



perfect ideal, as, in ascending some lofty mountain, we take in a 
wider horizon as we climb. And during this gradual conquest, in 
which humanity endeavours to strip off all that is low and base, 
primitive instincts, which are indeed an original stain, reappear 
every moment — indelible, though weakened — to remind us, not 
of a fall, but of the low estate from which we have risen. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF HEREDITY. 

It would be beside our subject and beyond the measure of our 
powers to examine here in detail the social consequences of 
heredity. To trace them through the manners, the legislation, 
the civil and political institutions, and the modes of govern- 
ment of various peoples, would require a separate work. Heredity 
presents itself to us under two forms, one natural, the other 
institutional. We have studied the former only, even so restricting 
ourselves to only one of its aspects, its psychological side; we 
have but incidentally touched on the ground of physiology, in 
order to confirm oirr positions. It will therefore suffice, in order 
to conclude this work, to show how the institutional heredity 
derives from natural heredity, and thus to refer the effects to 
their cause. 

Every nation possesses at least a vague belief in hereditary 
transmission. Facts compel it : and indeed it may even be main- 
tained that in primitive times this belief is stronger than it is 
under civilization. From this belief springs institutional heredity. 
It is certain that social and political considerations, or even pre- 
judices, must have contributed to develop and strengthen it, but 
it were absurd to suppose that it has been invented. The 
characters which we have already often recognized in heredity 
— necessity, conservatism, and stability — are logically found in the 
institutions which spring from it. This a rapid examination of 
the subject will show. In exhibiting the part of heredity in the 
institution of the family, of castes, of nobility, of sovereignty, it 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 361 

will be our special study to throw r light upon a point which, in 
our eyes, is of great philosophical importance — namely, the con- 
flict of heredity and free-will. 



1. 

The family is a natural fact Numerous works both in France 
and abroad show this, and have related the history of the family, 
described its various forms, and arranged the moral relations which 
subsist between its members. But with this we have here no 
concern. 

From the stand-point of heredity — too generally overlooked by 
moralists — it may be said that all forms of the family are reducible 
to two principal and opposite types, around which oscillate a great 
number of intermediate forms. The one allows a very large part 
to heredity, and a very small part to individual free-will. The 
other allows a very large part to individual free-will, but regards 
hereditary transmission as the exception, not the law. The former 
is the rule of strict conservatism • the latter the rule of testa- 
mentary liberty. 

If we examine the first of these types, we find it under various 
forms in all primitive civilizations, and it rests on a very firm faith 
in heredity. The child is regarded as the direct continuation of 
the parents ; and indeed, properly speaking, between father and 
son, between mother and daughter, there is no distinction of 
persons — there is only one person under a two-fold appearance. 
If this idea be applied to the entire series of generations, we find 
the case to be thus : — in the first place is a family chief, a mys- 
terious and revered being, usually ranked with the gods ; then a 
succession of generations, each represented by the first-born son, 
who is the visible incarnation of the first father, and whose part is 
essentially conservative. He collects together the religious beliefs, 
the traditions and the possessions of the family, and transmits them 
in turn. He may not alienate anything or destroy anything. 
He can alter nothing in the invariable order of succession which 
wraps him round in its fatality. Under such a regime, individual 
free-will counts for little, while heredity is supreme. This is a 
pantheistic organization of the family; heredity being the in- 



362 Heredity. 



variable and indestructible ground whereon the ephemeral shadow 
of the individuals is thrown, and over which it flits. 

In all primitive civilizations, the family came more or less near 
to this type wherein heredity is everything and free-will nothing. 1 
Among the Hindus, Greeks, Romans, and Aryan peoples in 
general, the family was a natural community, having not only the 
same possessions, the same interests, the same traditions, but 
the same gods, and the same rites. Religion was domestic, and 
hence Plato defines relationship to be ' a community of domestic 
gods.' These gods were of course worshipped by their own 
family, in their own sanctuary, and on an altar whereon the sacred 
fire was ever burning. No stranger could offer sacrifice to them 
without sacrilege. 

To this necessary heredity of rites, which it was of obligation to 
maintain, was added the heredity of property. Originally among 
the Hindus, property was inalienable. In many Greek cities ancient 
laws forbad the citizen to sell his plot of land. 2 In Greece and 
in India succession was from male to male in order of primo- 
geniture, and only at a late period in history was any share allowed 
to the younger sons, or to the daughters. It is probable that 
primitive Rome in like manner accepted the law of primogeniture. 

It is equally instructive to notice that testaments were intro- 
duced at a late period, at the time when the state and the family 
had broken away from the immobility of inheritance, in order to 
give freer play to individual action. Thus, according to Fustel de 
Coulanges, ancient Hindu law knew nothing of testaments. The 
same is to be said of Athenian law prior to Solon. At Sparta 
testaments do not appear till after the Peloponnesian war ; and at 
Rome they do not seem to have been in use before the law of the 
Twelve Tables. This allows to them the force of law : Uti 
egassil (paterfamilias) super peatnia tutelave suce rei, itajus esto. 

The rule which subordinates the individual to heredity, by 
making the conservation of property obligatory, exists in a more 
or less perfect form in the great families of Sweden, Norway, 
Denmark, and Scotland ; also over a large portion of Germany, 

1 On this subject see Fustel de Coulanges, Le Cite Antique, and Le Play, La 
Reforme Sociale, ch. ii. 

2 Aristotle, Politics, ii. 4. 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 363 

particularly in Hanover, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, and Bavaria.. 
In Russia, among the nomad tribes of the Ural, the Caspian, the 
lower Volga, and the Don, with the exception of personal pro- 
perty — limited to clothing — everything is possessed by the com- 
munity, and the heads of families cannot alienate anything. 

At the other extremity we find the opposite type of testamen- 
tary liberty, where the individual, instead of being the slave of 
heredity, is its absolute master, and may at will establish, restrict, 
suspend, or do away with it. Here the freest play is accorded to 
free-will, and heredity, in place of being the rule, becomes the 
exception. Thus it is not surprising that this rule, unknown to 
primitive peoples, is propagated and extended in proportion as 
we depart from nature and her fatalistic laws. It is found in its 
most perfect form in the United States of America, and under a 
restricted form in England, in various German States, and in Italy. 
As we have seen, it made its appearance at an early period in 
ancient Rome. 

We need not here inquire whether testamentary discretion has 
drawbacks. It is certain that if in France legislation is adverse 
to it, the reason is lest it should be abused ; and when we observe 
the evident tendency of those who demand it to go back to the 
ancien regime, we can but believe that it would there be attended 
by disastrous consequences. It is with testamentary as with all 
other liberty — in order to possess it a man must be worthy, and 
know how to use it. 

It will be observed that the two opposite rules of which we 
have spoken imply two different views of property ; the one in 
which property exists completely, the other in which it hardly 
exists at all. Under the rule of testamentary discretion, owner- 
ship is absolute and without limit; property forms part of the 
individual, who disposes of it as of himself. 

Under the rule of obligatory conservation, ownership is reduced 
to usufruct. And since under the first arrangement heredity has 
no place in right, since it emanates wholly from free-will, and as 
under the second it always exists in right and in fact, being the 
law, we are again face to face with the same antinomy; and we 
may conclude that in the organization of the family there has 
ever existed an inverse proportion between the power of heredity 
and that of free-will. 



364 Heredity. 



11. 

The family is the molecule of the social world. So soon as it 
is constituted society may take its rise. Families unite, associate 
together, amalgamate, and are perpetuated by thus commingling : 
the body social is the result of this fusion. After it has passed 
•out of its embryonic phase — the hunter and the nomad states — 
and when the first forms of civilized life are beginning to be 
produced, then heredity appears as a social and political element 
in the institution of caste. 

Caste is the result t)f various causes — difference of race, con- 
quest, religious creeds — but everywhere its groundwork is the 
belief in heredity. Caste is exclusive : there is no entrance into 
it except by birth ; no art, no merit, no violence avail to burst 
open the doors of caste ; it reigns supreme over the destinies of 
the individual. Here we find heredity invested with its constant 
characteristics, viz., conservatism and stability. Nothing is more 
stagnant than nations that have accepted caste. 

In India we find the ideal of this arrangement, for nowhere else 
is it more firmly grounded, more compactly constituted, or more 
minutely regulated. Moral heredity, its natural basis, is explicitly 
recognized in the sacred laws of Manu. 

' A woman always brings into the world a son gifted with the 
same qualities as he who begat him.' 

1 We may know by his acts the man that belongs to a low class, 
-or who is born of a disreputable mother/ 

' A man of low birth has the evil dispositions of his father, or 
of his mother, or of both — he never can hide his descent' 1 

Hindu law, as all are aware, admits four original castes : the 
Brahman, born from the mouth of Brahma; the Kshatriya, sprung 
from his arm ; the Vaishya, from his thigh, and Sudr from his 
feet. ' The priestly, the military, and the commercial castes are 
all regenerate ; the fourth, or servile caste, has only one birth. 2 
There is no fifth caste. ? 



1 Manava Darma Shastra, book x. 

2 Ibid, book x. ch. iv. According to the Hindu creed, to attain to supreme 
felicity (Nirvana), one must be born again successively into the noble castes, in- 
cluding that of the Brahmans. The latter complacently tell of a devout king 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 365 

The Brahman has for his inheritance science, contemplation, the 
meditation of the mysteries, the care for divine worship, and the 
reading of the sacred books. He is recognized by his staff, by the 
cord he wears over his shoulder, by the girdle around his loins, 
but still more by his complexion, which differs from that of the 
other castes ; for as travellers tell us, a Brahman who is a some- 
what black, and a Pariah a somewhat white, are regarded as mon- 
strosities, and in no other caste are there handsomer women or 
prettier children. 

The Kshatriya is destined for active life, he is soldier or king ; 
but he owes submission to the lord of all castes, the Brahman, a 
duty which he has not always discharged. 

The Vaishyas practise the manual arts, agriculture and com- 
merce; they support the priest and the noble, who pray for them 
or fight for them. 

In the lowest grade, the only virtue of the Sudr is resignation. 
Devoted to servile labour, and treated with contumely, he knows 
no life but that of privations, but he has a faint glimpse of salva- 
tion in the distant future. 

Thus each has his place, his environment, to which he is im- 
prisoned by his birth. He may not aspire higher, neither may he 
marry outside his own caste. The time, however, had to come 
when these four primitive divisions would no longer suffice. 
Though the law proscribes and anathematizes extra-caste marriage, 
still passion and the chances of life were necessarily stronger than 
the law; hence, besides the four pure castes, others have arisen, 
and these the laws of Manu, while pronouncing them impure, still 
condescends to regulate. It would be tedious to enumerate these 
hybrid classes ; for as was to be expected, the development of insti- 
tutions and the progress of civilization have produced an endless 
variety of crossings. Thus, half a century ago there were no less 
than four classes, subdivided into twenty others — and this simply 
among the Brahmans of the south. Among the Sudr there are 
about a hundred and twenty, which may be reduced to eighteen 

who aspired to the Nirvana, but who, like any other person, had to obey his 
law, and to give up the practice of the austerities by means of which he was 
striving to obtain the miracle of a transformation inrpossible in the case of a 
Kshatriya. 



366 Heredity. 



principal classes. But, as Prosper Lucas observes, c these non- 
race classes — all alike excluded from the sacrifices, and destined to 
exercise the vilest functions — have no more value in the eyes of 
Hindus than horses, cattle or dogs without pedigree would have 
in the eyes of an Arab, a farmer, or a huntsman.' 

In all these subdivisions the only point which interests us is the 
part assigned to psychological heredity. It is very considerable 
indeed. According to Hindu belief, the father's influence pre- 
ponderates in the procreation of the children ; hence a marriage 
beyond caste on the part of the mothers is looked on as far more 
criminal than that of the fathers. When a Brahman woman 
marries a Sudr, the chandal (or cross-breed) born of their 
union ' is the most infamous of men.' 

It is curious to observe that the law rests on heredity in assign- 
ing appropriate occupations to the impure castes. While admit- 
ting the preponderance of the father over the mother, it looks on 
the cross-breed as deriving from both. Thus, a child born of a 
Brahman and a Vaishya woman will practise medicine, a profession 
the practice of which is in one respect a liberal pursuit, while in 
another respect it approaches the manual arts. The son of a 
Kshatriya and a Brahman woman, will be at the same time a 
horseman, in reference to the warrior habits of his father, and 
a bard or singer like the Brahmans. The sons of a Kshatriya 
and a Sudr woman, will be hunters like their fathers, but their 
game will be serpents and animals that dwell in caves. 

It is plain that this legislation has been skilfully elaborated and 
deduced from a single principle— heredity. Nowhere else is the 
institution of caste so firmly grounded or so complete. It is, how- 
ever, found in a less perfect form under all primitive civilizations 
— among the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Egyptians, who 
reckoned seven classes according to Herodotus, five according to 
Diodorus Siculus. It was found by the Spaniards in Peru ; in 
grades above the commonalty were the Curucas and the Incas. 
The latter, whose skulls, according to Morton (Crania Americana), 
6 give evidence of a decided intellectual pre-eminence over the 
other races of the country,' constituted the high nobility. 

We may even say that universally, in all nations who have risen 
above barbarism, we find, if not castes, at least classes, which con- 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 367 

stitute the mitigated form of caste. The class is not as exclusive 
as the caste. Though birth and heredity are its groundwork, and 
though it is natural to a privileged order that it should close its ranks 
against the new-comer, entrance is still possible ; merit, energy, 
sometimes even chance, are strong enough to break down the 
barriers. History, moreover, shows that class assumes every pos- 
sible form, being sometimes inviolable, like caste, anon reduced to 
very slight differences for the sake of distinction. 

The political institution of classes is found among the Greeks, 
the Romans, and Germanic nations. Perhaps even we may dis- 
cover in the beginnings of their history some vestiges of caste. In 
Rome, at least, the distinction between patrician and plebeian was 
very sharply drawn at first, and among the Germans between the 
freeman and the slave. Indeed the institution of slavery, which 
was universal in ancient times, formed among all peoples at least 
two classes, based on heredity, and brought about the fact that all 
ancient communities, even the so-called democracies, were in 
reality aristocracies. 

We may compare with castes and classes hereditary professions, 
which are but the same thing under another form. It is even 
probable, as Lucas says, t that the heredity of professions is the 
primitive type, the elementary form of all institutions based on the 
heredity of the moral nature. Capacities are at first distributed 
naturally ; man follows his instincts, no less than the animal, the 
family no less than the species. Practice produces habit, habit 
produces 'art, and acquaintance with an art gives an interest in 
it : nature and education concentrate more and more a given art in 
a certain family, the common belief regards the art as belonging to 
that family; in course of time come institutions, religions, conquests, 
which, in the place of a fact, traditional but free, substitute an 
obligation, and in place of the spontaneous will of the father, or 
the instinctive dispositions of the child, set up the will of the law, 
the conqueror, or the priest.' 

Here no doubt we must assign a large measure of influence to 
education, to external agencies — heredity is not all, yet it is much. 
If any one doubt this, let him remark how in ancient times certain 
professions of a purely moral nature, which necessarily presuppose 
definite psychological conditions, were hereditary, and he will see 



368 Heredity. 



that this heredity cannot be altogether explained by external causes, 
by family traditions, or by secrets kept and transmitted. 

Thus in Grecian antiquity medicine was originally cultivated by 
a few families. The Asclepiadae, or family of ^Esculapius, called 
themselves the descendants of that god. They practised their art 
in the Asclepia, and founded the schools of Cnidos, of Rhodes, 
and of Cos — Hippocrates was the seventeenth physician in his 
family. 

The art of divination, the gift of prophecy, that high favour of 
the gods, was by the Greeks supposed to descend generally from 
father to son. This belief prevailed in Homeric times : Calchas 
was descended from a family of soothsayers. 

The heredity of priesthood is found among many peoples who 
have not known caste distinctions. It is seen in Mexico, in Judsea, 
where the tribe of Judah alone supplied the priests, and even in 
Greece. In the latter country, where the religion was essentially 
local, and each city had its own gods, we find in most of the towns 
some sacerdotal family — at Delphi, the Deucalionidae and Bran- 
chidae ; at Athens, the Eumolpidae, and so on. 

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is plain, that heredity 
is a law of nature from which a people frees itself in proportion as 
it grows in civilization. If we take one after another all the primi- 
tive civilizations, India, Persia, Egypt, Assyria, Judaea, Peru, 
Mexico, Greece and Rome, we shall often find in their earliest 
period the institution of caste, and of hereditary professions, and 
always that of classes. If, on the other hand, we notice how among 
very highly civilized nations — that is to say, those as far removed 
as possible from nature — the institution of caste and of hereditary 
professions is quite impracticable, and how even classes have dis- 
appeared; if we observe the advance toward liberty more and more 
marked through the transformation of castes into classes, and the 
abolition of classes, as also by the change from the heredity of 
professions to corporations and to freedom of occupation; if, 
furthermore, we remark how the influence of heredity is at first held 
to be absolute (caste), then relative (class), finally, though perhaps 
wrongly, as somewhat weak (the present period), we cannot but 
admit that these facts disclose to us a curious antagonism between 
heredity and free-will. 



Social Conseqitences of Heredity. 369 

Heredity is a law of living nature, a biological law of destiny 
and necessity, like physical laws — a principle of conservatism and 
stability. Hence it is that so soon as civilizations have attained 
any growth, in accordance with the law of progress, of which varia- 
tion is the essence, there arises a struggle between these two 
principles, and then either progress must overthrow caste, as in 
Greece, or caste hinder progress, as in India. 

From this antagonism between heredity and free-will flow some 
weighty consequences. We will state these in the conclusion of 
this work, when we shall be able to generalize the facts more fully. 
We will now examine the relations between heredity and nobility. 

in. 

Nobility, whether we accept or reject it, has its natural causes. 
It is the result of the original inequality of talents and characters. 
History shows that though it has assumed various shapes, in 
different countries and at different periods, it has always and 
everywhere rested on a conscious and intentional selection, con- 
solidated in an institution; this, at least, is what it has wished to 
be. With the exception of China, where nobility is conferred on 
principles the very reverse of those prevailing elsewhere, 1 we find 
this distinction always based on heredity. In the ancient east 
(India, Persia, Egypt, Assyria, etc.) where the rule of castes pre- 
vailed, we do not find nobility in the modern sense of the word — for 
though nobility is often called a caste, the two things are in reality 
incompatible. Nobility is impossible either in a community so 
simple as to be included in three or four divisions, or in a very 
mixed, very active community, such as that of the United States. 
But the social state of the east resembled the symbolic ladder of 
the worship of Mithra, each of the seven degrees of which was of 
a particular metal and answered to a special initiation into the 
infinite mysteries of the universe. Each man was born in his own 
degree, of iron or silver, lead or gold, as the case might be, and 

1 In China, when the sovereign confers a title of nobility on a subject, that 
title ennobles the ascendants, while the descendants remain commoners. This 
anomaly is explained by the great importance attached by the Chinaman to the 
cultus of his ancestors ; indeed, he scarcely knows any other religion than this. 

2 B 



3 70 Heredity. 



there he must remain : the caste absorbed the individual. The 
westerns lengthened out this over-short ladder, and increased the 
number of degrees, and we might even say that in many countries 
this process has neutralized itself. Between these two extremes — 
the seven-stepped ladder on the one hand, and on the other the 
almost inappreciable gradient of modern times — stands the true 
period of nobility, Rome and mediaeval Germany. 

The great families which were to be perpetuated for cen- 
turies by heredity arose in many ways, of which history alone can 
give the full details. Some conquering race, inferior in numbers, 
superior in force, often formed a privileged class, and held the 
vanquished down — such were the Normans in England, the Incas 
in Peru, the Franks in Gaul. The latter were the only nation that 
possessed the ' terre salique,' c alleu ' or ' franc-alleu '■ — hereditary 
domain, which became later the fief. They were ennobled by the 
very fact of conquest. Oftener, nobility was conferred by the 
prince, in recompense for some brilliant action. There were also 
certain charges and functions that gave nobility, and even some 
kinds of commerce. Nobility was either transmissible or intrans- 
missible, personal or territorial, of the gown or of the sword; in 
short, there were so many denominations, varieties, distinctions, 
and categories, that an author in the last century who tries to 
classify them reckons more than sixty. 

But whatever its origin, nobility was, always hereditary. This is 
its first law. It must perpetuate itself from its own resources; it 
must have a past history, and must preserve its memories and its 
traditions. In the state it represents stability. This character of 
continuousness and permanence, which is the essence of heredity, is 
also the essence of nobility. It has therefore always been careful 
to keep itself pure; this is its first duty. ' Nobility/ says the Comte 
de Boulainvilliers, ' is a natural privilege, incommunicable by any 
way other than that of birth.' There is no -greater stain on cha- 
racter than to act in a manner derogatory to birth. To derogate 
from nobility is to deny ancestry and to ruin descendants ; it is 
to break the golden chain and to let them fall down below the 
commonalty, into a category apart — to make them outcasts, for 
whom society has neither name nor place. Hence those genea- 
logical trees, so carefully drawn and blazoned, extending back- 



Social Consequences of Heredity. o1 l 

wards through the ages. Hence anxiety about alliances, always an 
important matter, not only for the German baron, who required 
in his wife six quarterings of nobility, but also of the Inca, who 
married his sister in order to perpetuate the race of the Sun. 

i Nobility,' says Dr. Lucas, ' in the primitive vigour of its insti- 
tution, made it a point of honour not to mingle its blood with the 
blood of other classes. In its minor alliances it scrutinized as 
minutely the purity of pedigree as the Arabs in Africa, orj the 
members of jockey clubs in our day, with their eyes on the French 
or English stud books, scrutinize the pedigree of their horses.' 

To us it appears clear and unquestionable that nobility is every- 
where founded on the idea of heredity. The first step towards its 
institution is the hypothesis, distinctly expressed by some, indis- 
tinctly perceived by others, that all kinds of worth are transmissible; 
that a man inherits from his ancestors courage, regard for honour, 
loyalty, no less than lofty stature, robust health, and strong arms. 
Bon sang ne peut mentir — Blood must tell. Our old feudal poems 
delight to represent cowards and felons as bastards, unworthy 
scions of a great race that have soiled their blood. The brave 
spring from the brave, and love to proclaim their genealogy. 1 

Hence an illustrious writer of our day attributes to the belief in 
heredity a far too unimportant part when he says : ' The true idea 
of nobility is that it originates in merit, and as it is clear that merit 
is not hereditary, it is easily shown that hereditary nobility is an 
absurdity. But this is the universal French mistake of a distribu- 
tive justice, with the state holding the balance. The social reason 
of nobility, regarded as an institution of public utility, was not to 
recompense merit, but to call forth, and render possible and even 
easy, certain kinds of merit.' 2 The author's stand-point is no doubt 
somewhat different from our own, since he considers more par- 
ticularly the utility of nobility as an institution, not its legitimacy 
as a consequence; but we still hold that belief in the heredity of 
merit is the groundwork of nobility, and that, like every belief that 
is living and unshakable, it has survived all the attacks, criticisms, 
and reverses it has sustained from experience. In our view 



1 See Homer's poems, which have so much analogy with our feudal world. 
3 Renan, La Monarchie Constitutionelle en France, p. 25. 



37 2 Heredity. 



nobility is the result of two factors — the idea, whether true or false, 
of a certain merit above the common, and the opinion that this merit 
is transmissible. Undoubtedly, from the altogether ideal point of 
view, the institution of nobility may be considered an excellent 
one. To choose only the best; to keep intact the selections made, 
and from the cradle to fashion them by tradition, precept, and 
example; to care for them as we care for a choice and rare hot- 
house plant embedded in rich mould — to do this would be to prac- 
tise strict selection, with education added. But this is only a 
dream, as may be easily shown. 

First, as regards its origin ; nobility, while assuming to be a select 
class, has never been any such thing, save in a very restricted 
sense — that it fostered the warlike virtues. It had everywhere its 
rise in that period of the youth of nations when the imagination 
had no other ideal than the hero, no other cult than hero-worship, 
where the only virtue is honour, the only trade, war. Later, in 
more advanced ages, it was seen that the pacific virtues have also 
a nobility of their own — that an artist, a man of science, an in- 
ventor, belong also to the chosen class; but, apart from the 
nobility of the law, that aristocracy which it was attempted to 
establish under the title of 'literary nobility/ or 'spiritual nobility/ 
was never in any way to be compared with the warrior aristocracy 
— perhaps because it was soon perceived that genius is not so 
easily transmitted as courage. Hence, the selection which served 
as a basis for nobility was both very incomplete in principle and 
often very unsuccessful in fact. The only aristocracy that has 
practised this selection on a very liberal scale, while it has, in the 
words of Macaulay, become ' the most democratic aristocracy in 
the world/ is at the same time the only one in the world that has 
continued to be both powerful and respected. 2 

If selection is open to question, the dogma of hereditary trans- 
mission is no more stable. We have seen that heredity is a law 
of animated nature ; that under purely ideal conditions it would 
lead to the continuous repetition of the same types, the same 
forms, the same properties, the same faculties ; but in that most 



1 In the House of Lords, of the four hundred and twenty-seven lay peerages 
only forty-one are of date prior to the seventeenth century. 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 373 

complex elaboration whence results the living being, so many 
laws are superimposed on one another, intersect one another, 
strengthen and neutralize one another • so many accidental facts 
intervene, often so as to confuse and destroy the whole, that the 
resemblance of children to parents is never more than approxima- 
tive. Experience alone can decide whether this is sufficient or 
insufficient, whether the law has been stronger than the exceptions, 
or the exceptions than the law. But to submit nobility to the 
control of experience and to discuss its title at each accession 
by birth, would amount in fact to its suppression. But even if 
we admit that the law is stronger than the exceptions, and that 
the physical and moral qualities of the ancestors are transmitted 
to the descendants, there remains nevertheless another shoal on 
which the institution of nobility must wreck itself — the enfeeble- 
ment produced by heredity. 

6 The citizens of the ancient republics,' says Littre, c were never 
able to maintain themselves by reproduction. The nine thousand 
Spartans of Lycurgus's time were reduced to nineteen hundred in 
the time of Aristotle. The people of Athens were often com- 
pelled to recruit their numbers by the admission of foreigners. 
Nor has the course of things been different in modern times. All 
aristocracies, all close corporations that fill up their ranks solely 
from among themselves, have suffered gradual losses which would 
have caused a certain reduction were it not for the additions made 
from time to time. There is not in Europe a single national 
nobility the majority of which dates from considerable antiquity.' 1 

Benoiston de Chateauneuf, in a curious Mhnoire statistique sur 
la dur'ee des families nobles en France, shows that the average 
duration is not more than three hundred years. He finds the 
causes of this in primogeniture, consanguineous marriages, and, 
above all, war and duelling. We must, however, believe that 
the fact is regulated by more general causes, for the same 
author admits that his researches into the extinction of mer- 
cantile families and those of the lower classes have led to the 
same results. Of four hundred and eighty-seven families admitted 
into the citizenship of Berne between the years 1583 and 1654, 

1 Be la Philosophic Positive, 1845. 



374 Heredity. 



less than half (two hundred and seven) remained at the end of a 
century, and in 1783 there remained only one hundred and sixty- 
eight, or one-third. Of the hundred and twelve families con- 
stituting the federal council of the canton of Berne in 1653, there 
remained, in the year 1796, only fifty-eight. 1 

6 The degeneration of the race in noble families,' says Moreau 
of Tours, ' has been noted by sundry writers. Pope remarked that 
the noble air which the English aristocracy ought to have worn 
was the one thing they did not at all possess ; that it was a 
saying in Spain that when a grandee was announced in a drawing- 
room you must expect to see a sort of abortion; finally, in France, 
any one who saw the men that constituted the higher ranks might 
suppose that he was in presence of a company of invalids. The 
Marquis de Mirabeau himself, in his Ami des Homines, speaks of 
them as pygmies, or withered and starved plants.' We have 
already endeavoured to determine the causes of this physical 
and mental degeneration, by showing that heredity is a force ever 
contending against opposite forces, that it has its own struggle for 
life, and that in each generation, even when victorious, it comes 
out of the contest much weakened by its losses. 

We have now seen the difficulties which criticism based on ex- 
perience might bring against nobility considered as a natural fact 
We need not here inquire into its value as an institution. It is 
certain that its influence has not been always evil, and that it has 
indeed ' called forth certain kinds of merit. ' But such is the 
condition of human affairs that we must overlook much evil where 
a little good is done. Man is so small, that in order to become 
great he must cease to be himself — he must be blotted out, sacri- 
ficed in the interest of an idea, a caste, a corporation, a country, a 
lineage which he shall represent. Thrown into the infinity of 
time, like a waif on the boundless ocean, he seeks some stay for a 
longer, less ephemeral, and yet perishable life. This is presented 
to him by nobility. Who can tell how many vulgar souls have 
been upheld and uplifted by the thought of their ancestry ! Many 
a man, as he has contemplated in some vast and silent hall 
the portraits of his forefathers, unimpassioned witnesses of his 

1 Memoire de VAcademie des Sciences Morales, vol. v. 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 375 

deeds, must have felt the heroic breath of those distant ages, 
whose extinct thoughts become conscious in him; he has been 
possessed with the instincts of his race, and, strengthened beyond 
the measure of his own lowliness, he has been uplifted to their 
height. 

Those communities which have accepted the heredity of virtues 
and of merit, and who have seen fit to consecrate this belief by 
the official institution of nobility must of course have also ac- 
cepted the heredity of vices and of criminal tendencies. Hence 
we have races that are accursed, unclean castes, proscribed 
families, and the crimes of the father visited on the children 
and the grandchildren. History teaches that the further we go 
back into antiquity the more widespread is this belief, and the 
more numerous are the institutions and laws that give expression 
to it. 

In China, 1 when a man has committed a capital crime, a minute 
inquiry is first made into his physical condition, his temperament, 
his mental complexion, his prior acts ; nor does the investigation 
stop at the individual — it is concerned with the most inconsiderable 
antecedents of the members of his family, and is even carried back 
to his ancestry. This is in our view to do full justice to heredity. 
But in the case of high treason, or when a prince is assassinated, 
this same people, establishing an unfair solidarity between father 
and children, prescribe 'that the culprit shall be cut up into ten 
thousand pieces, and that his sons and grandsons shall be put 
to death.' The Japanese laws, it is said, include in the punish- 
ment the parents of the culprit. 

The infliction on the children of the punishment due to the 
parents is very common under the Mosaic law. The whole human 
race inherit Adam's guilt, and suffer the penalty of the original sin. 

In the Middle Ages the Jews, an object of loathing, restricted 
within their Ghetti, feared and at the same time despised by all, 
paid the penalty of their forefathers' guilt — the unheard of, the 
unique crime of having killed a god. This is the most striking 
instance afforded by history of a brand of reprobation and infamy 
hereditarily transmitted. The barbarous codes that sprung from 

1 Gazette des Tribunaux, 31 Decembre, 1S44. 



376 Heredity. 



Germanic customs likewise accepted the heredity of guilt and 
punishment, and decreed a general proscription. 

It is astonishing to find this doctrine clearly expounded and 
reasoned out by a respectable and judicious Greek writer, born in 
very enlightened times. Plutarch, in his essay on the Delays of 
Divine Justice, after a very strong argument showing that the 
family and the state form a true organism, declares that ' the fact 
that divine vengeance falls upon a state or a city long after the 
death of the guilty, has nothing in it that is contrary to reason. 

1 But if this is the case with the state, it must also hold good of 
a family sprung from a common stock, from which it derives a 
certain hidden force, a sort of communion of species and of quali- 
ties, that extends to all the individuals in the line of descent. 

6 Beings produced by generation are not like the products of art. 
What is generated comes from the very substance of the being 
that gendered it, so that it derives from the latter something that 
is most justly rewarded or punished on his account, inasmuch as 
this something is his very self. 

' The children of vicious and wicked men are derived from the 
very essence of their fathers. That which was fundamental in the 
latter, which lived and was nurtured, which thought and spake, is 
precisely what they have given to their sons. It must not, there- 
fore, seem strange or difficult to believe that there exists between 
the being which begets and the being begotten a sort of occult 
identity, capable of justly subjecting the second to all the conse- 
quences attending on the acts of the first.' 

If we put in practice these conclusions of Plutarch we arrive at 
frightful consequences. 

To sum up, we have found a perfect correspondence existing 
between effect and cause. Nobility is, like heredity, a conserva- 
tive, permanent force that tends to immobility. But both are 
restricted within limits determinable only by experience. The 
institutions of modern nations appear more and more to accept 
this result, and to disregard all heredity save that which verifies 
itself. Bentham, we think, expressed a growing opinion when 
he said to the Americans : ' Beware of an hereditary nobility. 
The patrimony of merit soon comes to be one of birth. Bestow 
honour, erect statues, confer titles; but let these distinctions be per- 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 377 

sonal. Preserve all the force and all the purity of honours in the 
state, and never part with this precious capital in favour of any- 
proud class that would quickly turn their advantages against you.' 

IV. 

There still remain a few words to be said on the relations of 
natural and institutional heredity, with regard to sovereignty. Here 
again we find the same contrast between heredity and liberty, and 
between the belief of ancient times and the opinion of the modern 
world. 

Originally, sovereignty concentrated in the hands of one man, 
the king, was absolute. Being supreme head, he was regarded as 
of a nature high above all other men, and as the peer of the gods. 

6 The earliest traditions represent rulers as gods or demigods. 
By their subjects, primitive kings were regarded as superhuman in 
origin, and superhuman in power. They possessed divine titles, 
received obeisances like those made before the altars of deities, 
and were in some cases actually worshipped. If there needs proof 
that the divine and half-divine characters originally ascribed to 
monarchs were ascribed literally, we have it in the fact that there 
are still existing savage races among whom it is held that the 
chiefs and their kindred are of celestial origin, or, as elsewhere, 
that only the chiefs have souls.' 1 At a later period it was deemed 
sufficient to regard kings as of divine race, descended from gods. 
Such were the Incas of Peru. This opinion still holds in the east, 
and notably in China. 

It is easy to see that so long as this belief existed, heredity must 
have been the ground on which _ the sovereign power rested. 
Sovereignty being divine in its origin could only be transmitted by 
birth. Hence the important part played by hereditary transmis- 
sion in the history of royal houses, traces of which are still found 
in the theory of divine right. 

Modern ideas of the principle of sovereignty are the very oppo- 
site of this doctrine. The dogma of the national will having 
displaced the dogma of the royal will, the idea of a necessary 
transmission of the sovereignty by way of primogeniture is now 

1 Herbert Spencer, First Principles, § 2. 



37^ Heredity. 



thought mere nonsense. The consequence is that all civilized 
peoples either have abolished hereditary power — as is the case in 
republics ; or only admit it as a part of the machinery of govern- 
ment — as is the case in parliamentary monarchies. And in this 
latter case the thing accepted is not the permanence of inherit- 
ance, but the usefulness of machinery. 

The question of heredity as a political institution has been fully 
discussed. Its partisans and its opponents have never been able to 
agree, for the simple reason that they have never looked at it from 
the same side. It is very easy to attack heredity as a natural fact, 
and it is very easy to defend heredity as an institution. 

Facts prove, say its opponents, that neither genius, nor talent, 
nor even uprightness and rectitude are hereditary; why then allow 
power to fall into unworthy hands ? Besides, this sovereignty by 
right of birth tends to make princes proud, indolent, ignorant, and 
incapable. They might have added that, as we have seen, it is 
proved by facts that even among the most highly-gifted races 
heredity tends to enfeeblement, and that in the struggle for life, 
and while battling with difficulties, it crumbles away, so to speak, 
in its course. We must also bear in mind what has already been 
said concerning the extinction of noble and royal families, their 
ascending movement towards their apogee, and their subsequent 
inevitable decay. 

Its partisans make answer : Though mind may not be trans- 
mitted, traditions are, and this is a sufficient social result. The 
object of heredity is to introduce into the state an element of 
conservatism and stability. Without it, talents, time, and strength 
are wasted, simply in winning place ; with the aid of institutional 
heredity, a man is placed at once in the rank he deserves. Take 
the case of the Earl of Chatham, a simple cornet in a regiment, 
and the son of a widow who had but a very scanty income : he 
attained to power only at the age of forty-eight. But his son, the 
illustrious Pitt, had the advantage of a very careful education, and 
was considered a prodigy at the age of twelve. He entered Par- 
liament as early as the law allowed, when he spoke gained the 
ear of the house, and at twenty-three became Prime Minister. 
This is the history of every great family, and this perpetuation of 
honours is of advantage as well to the state as to the individual. 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 3 79 

Without discussing these opinions, we may say that in fact 
heredity, considered as a political institution, is tending to dis- 
appear. The idea of a right of sovereignty transmitted by birth 
finds but few adherents now, and it is commonly maintained only 
on the ground of utility. The same is to be said of that conserva- 
tive body found in nearly every state under various names — such 
as House of Lords, of Seigneurs, or of Peers, Senate, etc. Inherit- 
ance, which was its original groundwork, has been abolished nearly 
everywhere. The English House of Lords, which is justly held 
to be utterly at variance in this respect with modern tendencies, 
does nevertheless admit elective members. Thus Scotland is 
represented by sixteen elective peers, and Ireland by twenty-eight. 

In proportion, then, as we recede from primitive times, the politi- 
cal importance of heredity grows less. And if we hold, with the 
majority of thinkers, that the ideal towards which society must 
tend is the establishment of a political rule wherein the individual 
shall possess the largest possible liberty, and the government the 
least possible measure of power; where the liberty of each shall be 
limited only by a like measure accorded to all — the only duty of 
government being to enforce respect for this limitation — in such a 
government the heredity of power would have no meaning, the 
sovereignty being reduced to police duty. Here again we en- 
counter the same antinomy — the maximum of free-will coinciding 
with the maximum of heredity. 

We will close with a few remarks on the whole question of the 
consequences of heredity. 

All progress, or, to speak more precisely, all development, pre- 
supposes evolution and heredity. Without the former there is no 
change; without the latter there is no fixity. But the action of 
heredity has its limits. As we have seen in the physiological 
introduction, deviations tend to disappear, and after a few genera- 
tions the reversion to the primitive type is complete. In the moral 
order there are facts of the same nature — as, reversion to the savage 
life and to nomadic instincts, and the descent of certain highly- 
gifted families to the average level. 

The opposition between these two kinds of facts, and the con- 
tradiction in saying on the one hand that heredity produces 
departure from the original type, and on the other hand it leads 



380 Heredity. 



back to it, is only apparent. Reversion takes place when the race 
is left to itself. It does not occur in a race which, by the long- 
continued action of natural or artificial instrumentalities, has been 
adapted to its new surroundings. For every being, physical or 
moral, the condition of existence is a harmony between itself and 
its moral or physical surroundings. For every being the essential 
characteristics are those which are entirely in accord with its 
circumstances ; accidental characteristics are those which are more 
or less so. Consequently the former are stable, as being sustained 
from within and from without ; the latter are unstable, because, 
though sustained from within, they are opposed, or at least not 
sustained, from without. Reversion to the physical or mental 
type is therefore the result of natural laws, and by no means of a 
mysterious power or occult influence. 

But if the natural or artificial surroundings favour the fixity of 
the acquired character, and make it a habit — for heredity is only a 
specific habit — it then becomes a second nature, which is so firmly 
grounded in the original nature that it cannot be distinguished 
from it. Heredity, which seemed divided against itself, comes into 
agreement with itself, and two cases apparently contradictory fall 
under one law. Other characteristics, however, cannot be fixed, 
and they appear but for a moment. 

If this be understood, it is interesting to see how a contemporary 
philosopher infers from the two laws of heredity and of evolution 
the future progress of the human race. At the conclusion of his 
Principles of Biology, Mr. Herbert Spencer ingeniously shows that, 
in virtue of natural laws, civilization, the cause of which has been 
an excess of population, must result in a diminution of population. 
These considerations are so closely bound up with the consequences 
of psychological heredity that we shall be pardoned if we state 
them here in detail. 

A3 the perfectness of a being consists in its more and more 
complete adaptation to its environment, it is logical to infer that 
all the progress of humanity will consist in an adjustment of this 
kind. But by what means, and by the development of what 
faculties ? 

' Will it be by the development of physical strength ? Probably 
not to any considerable degree. Mechanical appliances are fast 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 381 

supplanting brute force, and the progress of social life has but little 
influence on bodily vigour. 

6 Will it be by the development of swiftness or agility ? Probably 
not. In the savages they are important elements of the ability to 
maintain life ; but in the civilized man they aid self-preservation 
in quite a minor degree, and there seems no circumstance likely 
to necessitate an increase of them. 

' Will it be by development of mechanical skill ? Most likely in 
some degree. Awkwardness is continually entailing injuries and 
deaths. Moreover, the complicated tools which civilization brings 
into use are constantly requiring greater delicacy of manipulation. 
All the arts, industrial and aesthetic, as they develop, imply a 
corresponding development of perceptive and executive faculties in 
men — the two necessarily act and react. 

* Will it be by development of intelligence ? Largely no doubt. 
There is ample room for advance in this direction, and ample 
demand for it. Our lives are universally shortened by our igno- 
rance. In attaining complete knowledge of our own natures, and 
of the natures of surrounding things, we shall better understand the 
conditions of existence to which we must conform. 

' Will it be by the development of morality, by a greater power 
of self-regulation ? Largely so : perhaps most largely. Right 
conduct is usually come short of more from defect of will than 
defect of knowledge. To the due co-ordination of those complex 
actions which constitute human life in its civilized form, there goes 
not only the pre-requisite — recognition of the proper course; but the 
further pre-requisite — a due impulse to pursue that course. A 
further development of those feelings which civilization is develop- 
ing in us must be acquired before the crimes, excesses, diseases, 
improvidences, dishonesties, and cruelties, that now so greatly 
diminish the duration of life, can cease. 

■ No more in the case of man than in the case of any other 
being, can we presume that evolution has taken place, or will here- 
after take place, spontaneously. In the past, at present, and in the 
future, all modifications, functional and organic, have been, are, 
and must be immediately or remotely consequent on surrounding 
conditions. What, then, are those changes in the environment to 
which, by direct or indirect equilibration, the human organism has 



382 Heredity. 



been adjusting itself, is adjusting itself now, and will continue to 
adjust itself ? And how do they necessitate a higher evolution of 
the organism ? 

' Civilization, everywhere having for its antecedent the increase 
of population, and everywhere having for one of its consequences 
a decrease of certain race-destroying forces, has for a further con- 
sequence an increase of certain other race-destroying forces. 
Danger of death from predatory animals lessens as men grow more 
numerous. Though, as they spread over the earth and divide into 
tribes, men become wild beasts to one another, yet the danger of 
death from this cause also diminishes as tribes coalesce into nations. 
But the danger of death which does not diminish, is that produced 
by augmentation of numbers itself — the danger from deficiency of 
food. Manifestly, the wants of their redundant numbers constitute 
the only stimulus mankind have to obtain more necessaries of 
life ; were not the demand beyond the supply, there would be 
no motive to increase the supply 

' This constant increase of people beyond the means of subsistence 
causes, then, a never-ceasing requirement for skill, intelligence, and 
self-control — involves, therefore, a constant exercise of these and 
gradual growth of them. Every industrial improvement is at once 
the product of a higher form of humanity, and demands that 
higher form of humanity to carry it into practice. The application 
of science to the arts is the bringing to bear greater intelligence 
for satisfying our wants ; and implies continued progress of their 
intelligence. To get more produce from the acre, the farmer must 
study chemistry, must adopt new mechanical appliances, and must, 
by the multiplication of processes, cultivate both his own powers 
and the powers of his labourers. To meet the requirements of the 
market, the manufacturer is perpetually improving his old machines 
and inventing new ones ; and by the premium of high wages 
incites artisans to acquire greater skill. The daily-widening rami- 
fications of commerce entail on the merchant a need for more 
knowledge and more complex calculations ; while the lessening 
profits of the ship-owner force him to build more scientifically, to 
get captains of higher intelligence, and better crews. In all cases, 
pressure of population is the original cause. Were it not for the 
competition this entails, more thought and energy would not daily 



Social Consequences of Heredity. 383 

be spent on the business of life, and growth of mental life would 
not take place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incentive 
to a higher education of childaen, and to a more intense and 
long-continued application in adults. In the mother it induces 
foresight, economy, and skilful house-keeping; in the father, 
laborious days and constant self-denial. Nothing but necessity 
could make men submit to this discipline ; and nothing but this 
discipline could produce a continued progression. 

1 In this case, as in many others, nature secures each step in 
advance by a succession of trials, which are perpetually repeated, 
and cannot fail to be repeated, until success is achieved. . . . 

' The proposition at which we have thus arrived is, then, that 
excess of fertility, through the changes it is ever working in man's 
environment, is itself the cause of man's further evolution; and the 
obvious corollary here to be drawn is, that man's further evolution, 
so brought about, itself necessitates a decline in his fertility. 

'That future progress of civilization, which the never-ceasing 
pressure of population must produce, will be accompanied by an 
enhanced cost of individuation, both in structure and function, 
and more especially in nervous structure and function. The 
peaceful struggle for existence in societies ever growing more 
crowded and more complicated, must have for its concomitant an 
increase of the great nervous centres in mass, in complexity, in 
activity. The larger body of emotion needed as a fountain of 
energy for men who have to hold their places, and rear their 
families under the intensifying competition of social life, is, other 
things equal, the correlative of larger brain. Those higher feelings 
pre-supposed by the better self-regulation which, in a better society, 
can alone enable the individual to leave a persistent posterity, are; 
other things equal, the correlatives of a more complex brain ; as are 
also those more numerous, more varied, more general, and more 
abstract ideas, which must also become increasingly requisite for 
successful life as society advances. And the genesis of this larger 
quantity of feeling and thought, in a brain thus augmented in 
size and developed in structure, is, other things equal, the correla- 
tive of a greater wear of nervous tissue and greater consumption of 
materials to repair it. So that, both in original cost of construction 
and in subsequent cost of working, the nervous system must become 



384 Heredity. 



a heavier task on the organism. Already the brain of the civilized 
man is larger by nearly thirty per cent, than the brain of the 
savage. Already, too, it presents an increased heterogeneity, 
especially in the distribution of its convolutions. And further 
changes like these which have taken place under the discipline of 
life we infer will continue to take place. 

'But, everywhere and always, evolution is antagonistic to pro- 
creative dissolution. . . . And we have seen reason to believe 
that this antagonism between individuation and genesis becomes 
unusually marked where the nervous system is concerned, because 
of the costliness of nervous structure and function. In another 
place was pointed out the apparent connection between high 
cerebral development and prolonged decay of sexual maturity, 
the evidence going to show that where exceptional fertility exists 
there is sluggishness of mind, and that where there has been 
during education excessive expenditure in mental action, there 
frequently follows a complete or partial infertility. 1 Hence, the 
particular kind of further evolution which man is hereafter to 
undergo is one which, more than any other, may be expected 
to cause a decline in his power of reproduction. . . . 

< The necessary antagonism between individuation and genesis 
not only, then, fulfils with precision the a priori law of main- 
tenance of race, from the monad up to man, but ensures final 
attainment of the highest form of this maintenance — a form in 
which the amount of life shall be the greatest possible, and the 
births and deaths the fewest possible. This antagonism could 
not fail to work out the results we see it working out. The 
excess of fertility has itself rendered the process of civilization 
inevitable; and the process of civilization must inevitably di- 
minish fertility, and at last destroy its excess. From the beginning, 
pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. 
It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men 
to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to 
the clearing of the earth's surface. It forced men into the social 
state; made social organization inevitable, and has developed the 
social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements 



1 For details see Spencer's Biology, §§ 346, 366, and 367. 



Conclusion. 385 



in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily 
thrusting us into closer contacts and more mutually-dependent 
relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, 
the due peopling of the globe, and the raising of all its habitable 
parts into the highest state of culture ; after having brought all 
processes for the satisfaction of human wants to perfection ; after 
having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete 
competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness 
for social life — after having done all this, the pressure of popula- 
tion, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring itself 
to an end.' l 



CONCLUSION. 

We now sum up all that has been said, in order to get a general 
view of our subject. There, are two ways of reaching a conclusion : 
either we may restrict ourselves to the facts, or we may strive to 
attach them to some probable hypothesis ; we may limit ourselves 
to experience ; or, starting from experience, we may endeavour to 
reach beyond it. In the first case, heredity is regarded as a law 
of life, of which the cause is the partial identity of the con- 
stituent elements of the organism in parent and in child. In 
the second case, it appears to us as a fragment of a far broader 
law, a law of the universe, and its cause is to be sought for in 
universal mechanism. We will examine the question according 
to both of these methods. 



Let us first look at it simply from the stand-point of experience. 
To this end we need but review what has already been said in the 
course of this work. 

As regards specific characteristics, heredity comes before us with 
the evidence of an axiom, for it is without exception. In the 
physical, as in the moral order, every animal necessarily inherits 
the characteristics of its species. An animal which, per impossibile, 

1 Spencer's Biology, §§ 372 — 376. 

2 C 



386 Heredity. 



should possess with the organism of its own species the instincts 
of another, would be a monster in the psychological order. The 
spider can neither have the sensations nor perform the actions of 
the bee, nor the beaver those of the wolf. Just so in one and the 
same species, whether animal or human, the races preserve their 
psychical, precisely as they do their physiological characteristics. 
Finally, as regards man, there is not one — even of those varieties 
of the same race which we call peoples — that does not present 
permanent moral characters, when we consider the sum of the 
individuals. 

Under the specific form, then, mental heredity is unquestionable, 
and the only doubt possible would have reference to individual 
characteristics. We have shown from an enormous mass of facts, 
which we might easily have made larger, that the cases of indi- 
vidual heredity are too numerous to be the result of mere chance, 
as some have held them to be. We have shown that all forms of 
mental activity are transmissible — instincts, perceptive faculties, 
imagination, aptitude for the fine arts, reason, aptitude for science 
and abstract studies, sentiments, passions, force of character. Nor 
are the morbid forms less transmissible than the normal, as we 
have seen in the case of insanity, hallucination, and idiocy. 

Having got at the facts, the next thing was to interpret them, by 
ascertaining their laws. Here, in the inextricable tangle of con- 
flicting causes, we reach only a theoretic determination of the law. 
In practice, however, we can establish a few empiric formulas 
which enable us to class the facts tolerably well. Thus, heredity 
is either direct or indirect; now it passes from parent to child, 
now again it must be referred to some remote ancestor. W^e have 
endeavoured to show how the phenomena of atavism, or of rever- 
sional heredity, may, not inaptly, be compared to alternate gene- 
rations in lower species ; and how, at all events, those phenomena 
may serve to give us a correct idea of heredity and of the stubborn 
tenacity of its laws. 

Passing from the laws to the causes, we have carefully avoided 
all researches into ultimate reasons, and the only hypothesis we 
have judged admissible with regard to the immediate cause of 
heredity is this : psychological heredity has its cause in physiolo- 
gical heredity, and this in turn has its cause in the partial identity 



Conclusion. 387 



of the materials constituting the organism of both parent and child, 
and in the division of this substance at reproduction. Heredity 
is really, therefore, partial identity. Thus we have been enabled, 
precisely — topographically, as it were — to define the position of 
our subject with reference to all other psychological studies. 
Heredity belongs to the science of the relations between the 
physical and the moral; it is one form of the influence of the 
physical over the moral \ it is therefore a fraction of one great 
branch of that science. 

The study of consequences led us to practical questions. 
Heredity transmits, preserves, accumulates. Is the result of this 
to create intellectual and moral habits — that all progress prepares 
further progress, all decadence further decadence ? Two solutions 
occurred to us with regard to the general consequences of heredity, 
the one radical and hypothetical, and the other positive. The 
first, which attributes to heredity a creative part, explains thereby 
the very genesis of our faculties ; the second, which attributes 
to it the conservative part, explains thereby the development of 
our faculties. We accepted the first, as any bolder solution seemed 
premature. 

The question of the consequences appeared to us to be really 
dominated by this general law, which is verified by experience — the 
transmission of any acquired modification. When the fact of 
mental heredity shall be better known ; when our vague intuitions 
of this matter have become evident truths — then its social import- 
ance, as yet hardly suspected, will be better understood; and 
many a question which it were now idle to discuss will perhaps 
arise and furnish their own solution. Yet it is hardly possible for 
even the most inattentive observer not to ask whether, if the laws 
of psychological heredity were known, man might not employ 
them for his own intellectual and moral improvement, thus bending 
to his own purposes, here as elsewhere, the forces of nature. It 
is now some forty years since Spurzheim and others put the 
question, whether one day we might not be able to foresee the 
intellectual character of children, the psychological constitution 
of their parents being known, and whether 'we could not easily 
create races of able men, by employing the means adopted for 
the production of different species of animals. ' 



o 



88 Hei r edity. 



A categorical answer is impossible at present. Hitherto man 
has thought more of perfecting other races than his own, probably 
from ignorance of natural laws. Yet we may affirm, on the 
strength of an incontestable calculation of probabilities, that 
parents of superior mental ability are likely to produce intellectual 
children, and that, however numerous the deviations and anomalies 
(and we have seen that numerous they must be), still — since among 
facts of the same order, depending in part on constant, and in part 
on variable causes, law must at last carry the day — a conscious 
selection, carried on for a long time, would have good results. 
But the race so formed could never be left to itself, for, not to 
speak of atavism, which would bring back abruptly mental forms 
apparently extinct, we know that heredity always tends to revert 
to the primitive type, or, to speak without metaphor, what was 
acquired but recently possesses little stability ; perhaps, too, these 
selected constitutions resemble those very unstable compounds 
which it is very difficult to fix. 

We do not know what man was originally, nor can we tell what 
he yet will be. But compare for a moment the state of nature 
with that of the highest civilization. Compare the almost naked 
savage, his brain filled with images and void of ideas, with his 
rude speech and his fetiches — a man associated with nature, living 
her life, and forming one with her — with the man that is very remote 
from nature, highly civilized, highly refined — initiated into all the 
niceties of art, literature, and science, all the elegancies and all 
the complexities of social life, and practising that maxim of 
Goethe, Strive to understand thyself and to understand all things 
beside. The distance between these two extremes appears infinite, 
and yet it has been travelled over step by step. No doubt this 
evolution — the result of the complex play of numerous causes — is 
not due exclusively to heredity; but we have succeeded ill with our 
task if the reader does not now see that it has contributed largely 
to bringing it about. 

ii. 

Quitting now experience, though not forgetting it, we will 
endeavour to trace back the law of heredity to some more general 
law which shall explain it, Whatever may be thought of the 



Conclusion. 389 



theoretic considerations which follow, it must be borne in mind 
that they are independent of our investigations of the facts : they 
give completeness to the facts, but they do not alter them. We 
have nowhere confounded proof with hypothesis. 

If we except cut-and-dry solutions and certain narrow partisan 
views, we may say that contemporary investigation in England, 
France, and Germany, manifests one common tendency — conscious 
in some writers, unconscious in others — to hold that, whatever we 
know, and consequently whatever exists for us, whether in the 
physical or in the moral order, is reducible under one or other 
head of this antithesis : mechanism and spontaneity ; determinism 
and free-will. 

In the view of one school, mechanism explains, or will one day 
explain, everything, and any other hypothesis does but mask our 
ignorance. For another school, universal mechanism is only the 
empty form of existence, the totality of its conditions, not existence 
itself — the appearance of things, not the reality. They cannot 
conceive of a mechanism without a prirnum movens to give it im- 
pulse and vitality. The absolute determinism of phenomena is 
incontestable; the end of all science is to study it; the office of all 
science is to ascertain it; the progress of the human mind to detect 
it where all seems fortuitous and lawless. Every science must 
accept determinism — at least, so far as regards its empiric conditions 
— its constitution as a science depends on this. Even those sciences 
which most resist it will be compelled to accept it. We have 
applied this principle to psychological phenomena under a peculiar 
aspect, that of hereditary transmission — for heredity is one form 
of determinism. Mental activity is subject to divers laws, which 
are but divers forms of determinism, of which the most general is 
the law of association or of habit. With this subject we did not 
concern ourselves. From the complicated laws, each one of which 
performs its part in binding on us the yoke of necessity, we have 
selected one. It now remains for us to show that it is in fact a 
form of mechanism. 

In the order of physico-chemical phenomena it is universally 
admitted that everything may be explained by emotion and its 
transformations, and that consequently the most absolute deter- 
minism reigns in the inorganic world. 



,90 Heredity. 



With regard to vital phenomena there is no. such uniformity of 
opinion. Many hold that the harmony of the functions which 
support life in plants and animals cannot be merely the result of 
the general laws of motion, and that it necessitates the hypothesis 
of some principle distinct from the organism and subject to different 
laws. It cannot, however, be denied that all these vitalist explana- 
tions have a provisional character, that they yield daily to mechanical 
explanations, and that it looks as though eventually their only stay 
would be our ignorance. Furthermore, inasmuch as the quantity 
of motion in the universe is invariable, the hypothesis of a force 
possessed of the power of creating motion, of suspending it, and 
varying it, is full of difficulties and contradictions. Hence the 
conclusion which meets us at the end of all our scientific researches 
is that ' we are warranted in bringing life under the laws of inor- 
ganic matter, though there are some special processes peculiar to 
life/ (Claude Bernard.) 

There is still less disposition to admit determinism in the order 
of psychological phenomena. Yet whatever progress has been 
made by experimental psychology during the past forty years — real 
progress, though as yet but little known — consists in the investiga- 
tion of laws — that is to say, of invariable simultaneousness and 
succession — in other words of determinism. So recent is this study, 
so little has been done, compared with what remains to do, that 
psychological determinism necessarily finds many opponents and 
few adherents. Yet it is contrary to all logic to hold that this 
category of phenomena is not subject to determinism. In the 
first place, perception, which is the necessary starting-point of all 
conscious mental activity, is subject to physical and physiological 
laws with which we are partially acquainted ; and we have seen 
that every sensation is resolved by analysis into slight motions. 
In the next place, intellectual activity (judgment, reason, memory, 
imagination) is governed by the great law of association or of 
habit, which is evidently only a form of determinism. Finally, as 
regards even the voluntary act, we have seen that, besides being 
subject to the law of habit, which reduces it to automatism, since 
it is always determined by motives, it always enters, as far as 
regards its empirical conditions, into the web of universal 
mechanism. 



Conclusion. 391 



It would still remain for us to show that social and historical 
phenomena are not exempt from determinism; but it is impossible 
to do this here in a satisfactory manner. We may simply observe 
that it is the necessary consequence of all that has been said* 
History results from the action of nature on man, and of man on 
nature \ but if nature is subject to determinism, and man no less so y 
the resultant historical and social development cannot escape. 

Thus we find necessity everywhere — at the beginning, in the 
middle, and at the end of all things. It is almost superfluous to 
show that heredity is only a form of it. If vital actions, in their 
production and in their evolution are subject to determinism, and 
if physiological heredity is bound up with organic heredity, is it 
not plain that hereditary transmission is one of the causes that 
introduce mechanism into mental activity, and which introduce 
nature into the domain of free-will ? We have seen that in practice 
— that is, in the moral, the social, and the political order, free-will 
loses what heredity gains. The totality of the motions which, 
according to mechanical laws, determine an organism to be, and to 
be in such a manner rather than in another, determine indirectly 
the mental constitution, which, as regards its empiric conditions, is 
bound up with that organism. 

Heredity, therefore, is a form of detenninism ; but what distin- 
guishes this from all other forms is, that it is a specific deter- 
minism — the habit of a family, a race, or a species. 'The disposition 
possessed by the living economy to follow the directions previously 
impressed upon it — that tendency to repetition whence often results 
the apparently spontaneous reproduction of certain phenomena — 
is inherent in the organization; it is by it that animals are led to 
imitate themselves, that is, to repeat what they have previously 
done ; and this, too, leads them to imitate their ancestors/ (Du- 
trochet.) In other words, nothing that ever has been can cease to 
be; hence, in the individual, habit; in the species, heredity. This 
it is which fixes us in the indestructible series of causes and effects, 
and by this our poor personality is connected with the ultimate 
origin of things, through an infinite concatenation of necessities. 
Heredity is but one form of that ultimate law which by physicists 
is called the conservation of energy, and by metaphysicians uni- 
versal causality. 



39 2 Heredity. 



But it is difficult to admit that everything is reducible to 
mechanism. To us it seems impossible to see in mechanism any- 
thing else than the sum of the bare conditions and purely logical 
possibilities of existence : so that to accept mechanism is to accept 
the form instead of the reality. We firmly believe that wherever 
there are facts, of whatever kind, there is determinism • that 
wherever there is determinism there is science ; and that science 
can neither go beyond determinism nor fall short of it. But is 
there not beyond science a something that does not come under 
its law, high above all that science can know, by processes peculiar 
to it. To do away with it would be a contradiction, to explain it 
would be only to offer an hypothesis. It is impossible alike to 
deny and to determine it, for it comes to us at once as necessary 
and as unknowable. At most we can only say that this unknown 
is the reality that lies concealed beneath psychological determinism 
— the end towards which the vital processes tend in every being, 
and the obscure tendency which is manifested even in the absolute 
determinism of inorganic matter. 

This supreme antithesis between free-will and mechanism, which 
underlies the antithesis of science and art, of the individual and 
the general, is insoluble to us. 

At times we are inclined to believe that all reality is in the 
person, that perfection consists in the most complete individuation, 
and that the general is but an ephemeral form of existence, pro- 
duced by what is common to the individuals ; that beneath the 
veil of universal mechanism there exists in nature, as it were, a 
dispersed thought, which is unconscious of itself in inorganic 
matter, seeks itself in the animal, and finds itself in man. 

At another time we are inclined to the belief that individuality 
is but the transitory product of the interaction of eternal laws; 
that, lost in a little nook in the universe, the best thing for us is 
to regard personality as an illusion, and to look with disdain on 
our griefs, which are so vain, and on our pleasures, which are so 
brief, to enter into communion with nature, and share in the 
imperturbable serenity of her laws. 

At times, too, we are disposed to think that this supreme anti- 
thesis might be resolved without sacrificing either free-will to 
mechanism, or mechanism to free-will; that, were we to occupy a 



Conclusion. 393 



higher stand-point, we should see that what is given us from without 
as science, under the form of mechanism, is given us from within 
as aesthetics or morals, under the form of free-will. 

In our opinion, the progress of the present and of future sciences 
will enable us better and better to state this antinomy : it were rash 
to hope for its solution. 



THE END. 



Printed by William Moore &> Co. 



X 



Lb A 



TnA 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 070 997 6 



■ 

m r 



HEHfl 

7 I ■ 1 



■ 






■■I 



i ' . 



m 



■ 



Bra 
■■■a B 









